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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083177">La Belle Epoque</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken'>Davechicken</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Has All the Genders (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Dissociative Identity Disorder, F/M, Historical References, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicidal Thoughts, la belle époque</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:13:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,730</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Paris. The fin de siecle. </p>
<p>An angel posing as a student of the world meets a love-sick painter. </p>
<p>Liberty, fraternising, and a historical lack of equality with a pinch of ineffability.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hot Omens</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Le Premiere Etage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For artistic licence reasons, the Holy Water scene has been delayed a few decades. Historical inaccuracies may exist, please pretend they don't.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aziraphale liked Paris, especially now.</p><p>Of course, he always (almost always) tended to like wherever he was, which was why he was there. And though he had rosy memories of previous times and places, with the less-savoury parts dutifully forgotten, the immediacy of present pleasantries meant he was a child of the here and now. </p><p>Here was Paris. Now was somewhere in the late 1890s. (It was difficult, at his age, to keep track of the calendar. Not to mention, the calendars - plural - didn’t always work in a dignified and orderly way. As long as he was roughly in the right century and decade, he didn’t bother the finer details.)</p><p>The music was excellent. The wine was better. The food was exquisite. The wars and conflicts were at a tolerable low. The Seine was lined with cafes. And Aziraphale was in secular Heaven, if he was honest.</p><p>He had dressed and draped himself with the persona of a young man of estate, come to gay Paris to ‘study’. Which he was, in a way. He was taking in the galleries, the cafes, the thirst for knowledge. The theatre, the concerts… the thinkers, the dreamers… every element he might want to. As a man of undisclosed, but deep pockets, he found almost every door open to him. Including some he would rather not go beyond.</p><p>And since the incident (ahem) with the Bastille… he’d learned to speak French. It wasn’t <i>his</i> fault that Humans kept inventing new languages. He remembered when they could get by talking to anyone they met (if they weren’t interested in stabbing them), and then there’d been writing, and then things had blossomed out extensively and blast if he could remember them all. Sometimes he had to fight not to think about a term in a language long-dead. It was easier to maintain only one or two at a time, and keep things like Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin ticking over in the background. In case he wanted to read older texts. Oh, and then Chinese. And… how could he be expected to maintain all of that? It was too onerous.</p><p>But France was close to England, and he had found he liked both the climate and the culture of this region the most, and he’d made the effort to learn it. He’d still rather they all just spoke one thing, but you couldn’t try to force that more than once. Not without getting firm reprimands from on high, and terrible, towering consequences for those below.</p><p>Or them burning down bloody libraries. He was told it wasn’t Heaven, and Crowley had assured him it wasn’t Hell, but it had been far too convenient a timing and yes he was still sore about it.</p><p>But Paris.</p><p>Paris was good. Flowers blooming. Grapes fermenting. Dishes stewing. Beauty created. It wasn’t perfect, but it held so many of the things he most loved about these Humans. Their undying curiosity and drive, their obsession with understanding, explaining, exploring… and making. Always making.</p><p>Here, there were clusters of like minded spirits meeting over wine glasses and river banks. He danced from social circle to oval to circle to heated triangle and back again.</p><p>And one day, he was told he simply had to meet the latest darling of the scene. He fluffed up his finest outfit, and walked daintily over the cobbles to a slightly less respectable (and therefore, <i>exciting</i> quarter.</p><p>The person he was supposed to be introduced to? Oh. He smiled, and replied, and admired.</p><p>But he couldn’t remember their name.</p><p>Couldn’t tell you the blindest thing about them.</p><p>And if they noticed his distraction, they were polite enough to not mention it. His friend left with the poet, and Aziraphale waited as long as he could before he rose and walked shakily across to the table he’d been eyeing all night long.</p><p>“M-may I?”</p><p>Crowley did not look like he had, the last time Aziraphale had seen him. Not that they always wore the same outfits, but he had tended towards a more… macabre spin. And hadn’t it only been nine months or so since they last crossed paths?</p><p>Here he was, on a wine-damp table, with a mostly empty bottle. His long, vibrant hair caught up in a black ribbon at his nape. Dark eye-glasses obscured his slit pupils, but then everything else was… strange. </p><p>White (or nominally white) shirt. Open at the throat, with the cravat loose. Braces running from his belt up and over his shoulders. Sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and an open, slightly… paint-spotted waistcoat that was at least black, too. </p><p>He was scribbling with a piece of charcoal over some scraps of paper, the fingers of his other hand drumming the surface of the table. He either hadn’t noticed the angel, or had chosen to pretend he hadn’t. </p><p>“Uh….”</p><p>“I see you like to draw?” Aziraphale offered. </p><p>“Not very well.” Hands tried to cover and scoop up the scraps.<br/>
Aziraphale touched his fingers to a bare forearm (oh, the familiarity of it!), silently asking him to stop.</p><p>“May I?”</p><p>Crowley’s face turned, his cheeks pinkening, as he shrugged. “S’pose so.”</p><p>He leafed through the sketches. They were drafts at most, bare figure shapes and the vague lines of setting. Or this one, with a leaf in such intricate detail, Or this, with… him? As he was dressed now? </p><p>“My dear, this--”</p><p>“I take inspiration from what’s around me,” the demon mumbled, bringing his wine glass up to his lips to baffle the sound. “Don’t worry. You can burn it, if you want.”</p><p>“Why would I?” He pushed the paper towards him. “Though, if you’d… may I ask you to sign it? No one has ever sketched me before!”</p><p>Crowley leaned over, scratched at the paper, slammed down the empty wine glass, and rose. “Sell it, if I ever get famous. Or die, tragically.”</p><p>“But why would you--”</p><p>Crowley didn’t wait to answer, and when the angel looked down… oh. ‘Anthony’. </p><p>How very strange.</p><p>***</p><p>Aziraphale did not see Crowley at their regular meeting places, even though he left the signs in his window and he waited for longer than usual each time. He wondered if he’d embarassed him, or said something wrong. </p><p>It was a week later before he returned to the bar, hoping it wouldn’t be lonely.</p><p>Crowley was inside. He was arguing with the barkeep about his tab, and colourful language was ripe on the air.</p><p>Aziraphale waved to calm the commotion enough, and slipped a small purse of coins onto the bartop. “Would this settle the matter?” he asked.</p><p>“What? No, you can’t--”</p><p>“Oh, shut up, before I call the gendarmarie,” the barkeep snapped, pocketing the purse and retreating.</p><p>Aziraphale smiled, but Crowley stormed past him, out into the street.</p><p>So, confused, he followed.</p><p>“What in the bloody Hell do you think you’re playing at?” the demon asked, rounding on him when they were both outside. “You don’t go around paying another man’s debts, especially one you don’t know!”</p><p>“Don’t… but I do know you!”</p><p>“I did one bloody sketch for you. That’s all. I don’t need your damn pity or patronage. I’m not looking for a--”</p><p>“I beg your pardon?” </p><p>“I’m - I create because - because I must! Not… not to serve some…” he waved, generally, over Aziraphale. </p><p>“Oh.” He paused. “Well. Please, accept my sincere apologies, Monsieur…?”</p><p>“Anthony.”</p><p>Odd. Normally they didn’t pretend they didn’t know one another. Except when the angel denied their friendship, of course.</p><p>“Uhm… I’m Ezra,” he found himself responding, out of nervous energy. “Ezra Fell.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“I didn’t intend to offend you, I simply…”</p><p>Crow-- Anthony - sat down on the wall, the heels of his palms on his temples. His eyes closed, and he pushed his long legs ahead of him. “I’m… right. You were being… ‘nice’. It’s just that ‘nice’ doesn’t really… happen around here. It’s more of a whore-patron deal.”</p><p>Prostitution? Was that what he thought he’d meant? He’d simply meant to give him the freedom to enjoy himself, even if it was a little strange that he couldn’t just make it happen. </p><p>Perhaps this foray into ‘suffering artist’ required him to actually suffer.</p><p>“I was simply looking to help out a… an artistic soul who… was in need of a little windfall. I would see no one starve.”</p><p>“Man cannot live by wine alone.” Anthony looked up. “But I’m making a damn good try of it.”</p><p>Aziraphale - Ezra - lowered himself carefully onto the wall. He was struck by the memory of their first meeting, where Crowley had been the one to approach him. He’d been slightly on edge, but hopeful. Nothing like the bag of electric eels he was right now. </p><p>“Would you… would you object to being given the means to attempt it? I am something of a natural scientist, amongst other pursuits, and I should very much like to see the outcome of this experiment.”</p><p>“You want to pay me to get drunk.”</p><p>“If that’s what you need.”</p><p>“And you don’t want anything in return?”</p><p>“Well, I wouldn’t object to getting to know you better. Perhaps, if you’d allow me to see your art at times, or… see if we might become friends?”</p><p>The demon made a comment under his breath which Ezra decided he didn’t hear. </p><p>“Fine. But… you don’t do the paying for me. I need to… I need people to think I’m doing it myself.”</p><p>That seemed reasonable. The angel nodded. “Very well.”</p><p>“And you can’t ask me to be ‘friendly’. I’m not… friendly.”</p><p>“I would settle for ‘free to speak your mind’.”</p><p>There was a hint of sharpness in his teeth when he smiled, but he did. If just for a moment. “Then fine. But we’re drinking elsewhere, tonight.”</p><p>Anthony should probably not drink more, but Crowley could. Aziraphale nodded, and smiled as a hand was offered to help him up. “Please, lead the way.”</p><p>***</p><p>Anthony knew the way. All back-streets and rapid turns, darting through the Parisian night like a river seeking the sea. Ezra was pulled along in his wake, slightly breathless, and definitely excited.</p><p>This was the underbelly, the… slightly seedier, but almost more-real parts of the city. He’d been deliberately avoiding them, mostly because of the risk of scandal (which was silly, he could make any scandal vanish), but also because he felt, on some level, as if it was… beneath him.</p><p>He definitely stood out. His clothing marked him down as an outsider, and he felt eyes on him and his boots as they found the tavern. And if he was propositioned by a few street-walkers… he gestured and left a few coins in their stashes from afar. They needed to eat, and Heaven knew there was no shame in that. If it was alright for Her son, then it was alright for him.</p><p>The next place was even more dimly lit, and he was pulled to one corner with two stools, two glasses, and a bottle of something that didn’t look like it should be consumed by anyone. It did smell delicious, however, so he was only too happy to take a swig when offered.</p><p>Several swigs later, and his belly was warm and the cool air was beginning to leave his poor fingertips in peace.</p><p>“So. Why you really here?” Anthony asked. “I know my art is shit. So unless you’re telling the truth about no one ever drawing you, I can’t see why you’d come looking for me.”</p><p>He really wanted to hold up this little fabrication, didn’t he? It was interesting, if nothing else. Layered in secret double meanings. A little thrill. Harmless enough.</p><p>“Do you never just feel… drawn? I was… intrigued by your art. It seemed… important to me, somehow.”</p><p>Anthony sat back. Considered. “Maybe you connect to the subject matter.”</p><p>“Perhaps. What is--”</p><p>“No. I don’t tell you. You figure it out for yourself. That’s… that’s what art is.”</p><p>Hmm. But there were such things as academic analysis. Author's notes. Debate and discussion. “But it means something to you.”</p><p>“Yes. And it could mean something else to you. If I tell you what I intended, it takes away that… purity for you.”</p><p>Purity. Of meaning. Of connection. </p><p>Interesting.</p><p>“May I ask why you chose me as subject matter?”</p><p>Anthony didn’t sprawl like Crowley. He sat more earnestly, more correctly. He also peered over his glasses when he leaned forwards. </p><p>“I had to.”</p><p>He spoke with such… reverent earnest intent that it took the angel by surprise. “You…”</p><p>“Have you ever needed… needed to…” Expressive, wiry hands gestured over the air. “Needed to create? To… say something? Been…” He grunted, and looked hopeless for a moment.</p><p>“I have thought about it.”</p><p>“But you haven’t <i>done</i> it.”</p><p>“No.” To his shame. He was a consumer, and not a creator. </p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Why… haven’t I? I, ah… there are better than me at it, and… well… it’s foolish of me…”</p><p>“Is it foolish of me?” Anthony was creeping forwards on his chair again, hands now on the table. “Should I stop?”</p><p>“No! It - it’s different.”</p><p>“Why? Why is my art any better than yours?”</p><p>“Well, you can <i>draw</i>, for one.”</p><p>“You think that came automatically? Not through years of blood, sweat, tears?”</p><p>He hadn’t thought about that. He’d just assumed Humans were naturally artistic, or not. And he’d assumed that Crowley… except, this was Anthony… he shook his head.</p><p>“Draw me something. If you’re paying the bill, you might as well get lessons.”</p><p>“I can’t!” he sputtered. “I - that isn’t… I can’t!”</p><p>“You can.” The other reached into his waistcoat pockets, his trouser pockets, and pulled out a small stick of charcoal wrapped in a smoky handkerchief. </p><p>“It’s - no - I’m… that isn’t what I wanted to do,” he bleated, pulling back from the table, suddenly aware how he truly didn’t fit in.</p><p>“Then… what?”</p><p>Oh no. Oh no. He couldn’t say, but then this wasn’t Crowley. And no one here knew him, and this was Ezra, not Aziraphale. It would fit perfectly in his story. So… “Poetry. Verse. I… always wished to have that skill.”</p><p>“Then write.”</p><p>“You can’t just… write!”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“You - you need… inspiration. And… experience. And… a voice and I really should be going, th-thank you Monsieur--”</p><p>One hand snaked across the table and lightly circled his wrist. The touch was so… charged, somehow, that Ezra was breathlessly pinned.</p><p>“You will never know if you do not try.”</p><p>That was true of everything, he knew, but this was - it felt - different. “I don’t know how.”</p><p>“Then get drunk enough that you forget you shouldn’t. And it will happen.”</p><p>“If I’m drunk, I will hardly create good verse, Anthony!”</p><p>“No, perhaps not. But it will <i>exist</i>. And right now, it doesn’t. Does it?”</p><p>“...no.”</p><p>“So how can it be worse than no verse?”</p><p>It could be truly awful and embarrassing, he thought. But would he ever not feel that? Ezra pulled his lips in, running his tongue over the minute cracks he’d let form. Anthony might laugh. Think him pretentious. Think him foolish.</p><p>He hadn’t so far, not really. Or - rather - Crowley hadn’t. The other angels had, but this one - this one had been the only true friend he’d ever known. </p><p>“You won’t mock me?”</p><p>“There is nothing more brave than putting your heart into the world.”</p><p>He caught a glimpse of his amber eyes over the glasses, then, and something… just snapped into place. It needed to happen. He needed it to happen. Mouth dry, Ezra nodded. Then reached for another glass. Then another. </p><p>He needed to be much more inebriated for this.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Les deux font la paire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ezra was drunk, but it was more on the atmosphere than the alcohol. There was a sort of giddy intensity to the room, or perhaps just his drinking companion. He was fortunately unaware of the charcoal smudges on his cheeks and lips from his pensive moments, and the scrap of paper held a doggerel of verse. It started out with a few lines with many more corrections than words, then devolved into increasingly large and less-delicate calligraphy as the night wore on. </p><p>He looked up, feeling the light from the candles on the tables sting his eyes. </p><p>“Go on.”</p><p>“No,” he said, softly.</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“This one… is for me,” he explained. “I promise, the next one, I will let you see.”</p><p>“Ezzzzra!”</p><p>“I’m sorry, but… I promise, I shall write one you can see. You must allow me to keep this one. It is… special.”</p><p>Anthony pouted, but slunk back on his seat. The sprawl was more familiar, now, as if alcohol had sufficiently worn down the barrier, or the patina, to reveal the serpent below.</p><p>It just so happened this serpent didn’t really bite.</p><p>“Alright.” </p><p>“Thank you.” He swallowed, and secreted the paper about his person. Later, he’d bemoan the smudges and stains to his clothing, but right now… he had something. Something he had created. Something he’d wanted to say, or do, but hadn’t been able to. Not before.</p><p>“Yeah, well. All I did was let you drink your own money away.” Anthony stood, a complicated affair of far too much height for not enough being. </p><p>“Would you… would you consider it too vulgar to ask if you’d let me drink my money in your company again?”</p><p>“I am busy until Thursday. If you are not, I will be here.”</p><p>“As will I.” He watched as the other touched his temple and performed the slightest of bows. </p><p>“Until then, Monsieur.”</p><p>He waited until he’d left to rise, and he realised the stub of charcoal was still there.</p><p>It wasn’t even as if it was the best thing to write with, but he couldn’t leave the implement of his first artistic endeavour behind. Ezra pocketed it, and walked slowly back to his lodgings.</p><p>***</p><p>When had the lights haloed so? Or when had the river rippled with such promise and memory? It wasn’t the drink, it couldn’t be. </p><p>Everything was so! It just! He wanted to laugh, and the chime and tinkle of it danced on his tongue and bubbled in his throat. </p><p>It was beautiful! And alive! And alive and dying and sweet and decaying and… all those things the poets and wordsmiths and singers and bright souls had been telling him for all his life. He’d always loved the world, but now it - it was different! Or he was!</p><p>He wanted to swing around the lampposts, wanted to throw back his head and sing a song. Or - or something! It was all so wonderful, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. Life would never be the same. His life would never be the same. And he had to wait until <i>Thursday</i> to have anyone to really share it with.</p><p>He would <b>die</b>.</p><p>***</p><p>The next morning, Aziraphale prepared to attend the lecture on political philosophy. The world wasn’t quite as sparkly as it had been the night before, but he was suffused with a spreading, rolling warmth. It was as if good things were due to happen, and he knew it. </p><p>He’d put the small stub of charcoal in his dresser drawer, and hidden the poem inside one of his favourite books. </p><p>Once the lecture was over, he went to buy a little notebook. He already had pen and ink, though he bought some pencils so he could change his mind. Then he picked up a second notebook. If he was going to change his mind, he could do so in the first, before transcribing neatly into the second. </p><p>He did think about a third book, for ideas that were shy of a full work, but he thought the shopkeeper would imagine him quite eccentric. </p><p>When he got back to the lodgings, the housekeeper had a note for him. He smiled more widely than usual, and opened it. The short swirls and sign of a C that looked almost ophidian said it could only be one person: Crowley.</p><p>Oh good. He could show him his books.</p><p>***</p><p>It was most certainly Crowley who he saw at the bench. </p><p>Black from head to toe. Neatly dressed, and barely a hint of skin visible. Same glasses. Different ‘person’.</p><p>Even his posture was different, though he was stiffly formal today. None of the usual liquid grace. </p><p>“Aziraphale.” Not ‘angel’. </p><p>“Crowley,” he replied, seeing the greeting as an indication of ‘who’ they were supposed to be. “I must show you the journals I have purchased! They are simply---” </p><p>Crowley barely turned his head. There was no interest, no… spark. No fire. </p><p>“...divine,” he trailed, feeling foolish.</p><p>“You keep diaries, now?”</p><p>“No, it’s… oh, nothing.” He stuffed them back away, wondering why the other was being so cruel, and why it hurt his chest so much. </p><p>“I have an assignment. It is not far from here, Versailles.”</p><p>“And you wanted me to help?”</p><p>Prickly. No other word described the response. “I wondered if you needed any doing whilst I was there. You know. Efficiency.”</p><p>“Oh… no. But if you performed some little miracles, I could report them back and keep them off my back for a little longer?”</p><p>The demon nodded. “Sure. I’ll be back on Friday.”</p><p>Friday? But he was supposed to meet with Anthony on Thursday? Was this his way of saying he wouldn’t be around? Couldn’t - oh. They hadn’t exchanged details as their alter-egos. So to alert him in advance would be to break the fictional spell.</p><p>“Alright. Will - will I see you, after?”</p><p>“Of course you will. I’m always around. Mischief and all.”</p><p>Crowley stood, and left, and Aziraphale felt… broken.</p><p>***</p><p>The journals sat in the dresser drawer, which he refused to open. He refused to even look at them, and this held out until Thursday morning, when he collapsed onto the end of the bed and fought the rising urge to sob.</p><p>Was this Crowley’s way of breaking things off? Changing his mind? Sending him away?</p><p>Had he made a fool of himself? Had Crowley been humouring him, and now was letting him down gently? Or had he been secretly laughing at the impressionable young fool he was? </p><p>Oh, it was awful. Truly. He’d made himself into a mockery, and his fingers itched to burn the bloody scrap of nonsense.</p><p>He pushed it into the back of one of the three journals, and tied them up with a string. He couldn’t touch the charcoal stub, needing some memory of his idiocy, and he walked into the fresh, morning air.</p><p>***</p><p>He did not manage to throw his things into the river. His sentimental ridiculousness got the better of him.</p><p>Aziraphale felt so terrible, now, but he could remember, too, how good he had felt. Whether or not Crowley was ready to exist in that space… he had enjoyed it. He had <b>loved</b> it. He had fallen in love with all of the world, all over again. </p><p>And maybe, just a little, with the artist who let him find that.</p><p>The bundle sat on his lap, and he resolved (amongst too many pastries) to not give up. </p><p>He would not give up.</p><p>He could not. There was something in him that needed to come out, and if he had to do it alone… so be it.</p><p>***</p><p>The bar seemed as good a place as any. Aziraphale ordered wine, took a quiet table to one corner, and pulled out his little book. His fingers worked awkwardly at first, scratching out a few words and stalling. But before long, his hand was weaving over the page like Penelope at her loom. Back and forth, back and forth, telling of anger and frustration. Of blindness, then vision. Of hunger and fire and fear. Sloppy allegory, perhaps, but it was true. It was how he felt, and when he was done, he saw he was no longer alone.</p><p>Anthony stood, respectfully, behind the chair opposite him. Who knew how long he’d been there, watching, and the angel felt his cheeks heat up.</p><p>“I didn’t think you were coming.”</p><p>“I said I would,” Anthony replied, and took the seat at last. </p><p>But Crowley said he wouldn’t… but that was Crowley… and this was Anthony… and neither of them would acknowledge the other existed. It hurt his brain. Did they not know? Or was it some game? Some… trick? Or some escape?</p><p>He was disorientated, and his hands itched and his mind whirled. He poured another glass.</p><p>Anthony and Ezra here. Crowley and Aziraphale elsewhere. </p><p>Alright. Boundaries. He could understand those, even if he was surprised that Crowley could respect any. Perhaps ones he made himself were different.</p><p>“What are you writing? Can I see this one?”</p><p>“No!”</p><p>“But Ezra, you said--”</p><p>“I know. But. No… the next one. Please?”</p><p>A shake of his head, and a hint to the volume of hair tied firmly down. “Alright. But you’re buying more of that, then.”</p><p>“I can do that.”</p><p>Anthony looked for permission, then took up one of the blank journals. His fingers ran over the spine lovingly, felt at the weight of the paper. He opened it wider to sniff at the bonding, and then closed it.</p><p>“Nice book.”</p><p>Did people normally sniff books? People who weren’t… well, Aziraphale? Although he usually did that to printed volumes, not those for private use. Ezra felt oddly charmed, and twirled the pencil back and forth, feeling the bumps between his fingers and thumb. </p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>“Do you understand, yet?”</p><p>“Understand?”</p><p>“The… when you have to. <b>Have</b> to. Not because you’re looking for a topic or a subject, but because… it won’t let you rest until it’s done?”</p><p>Oh. Oh! Was that the lesson? To make him want this? To show him the fever-call in the blood? Because he knew it, now. He’d known it, watching the swans glide down the river. The weight of the journals against his breast. The desire to scream, and the only way to do so in metred, ordered verse. Making sense of the chaos, pinning it down to the page. </p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“That’s… why. That’s why I do what I do. No one in their right mind would choose to. If you do… it’s because you <i>must</i>.”</p><p>A madness, but a beautiful one. </p><p>But he’d drawn Azir-- Ezra. Why?</p><p>“You said I must find out what I think of your art, but surely… surely your own feelings are valid, too?” he pushed.</p><p>Head this way, then that. What did he think, behind those glasses? Those pursed, wine-red lips? What did he see when he looked at Ezra? </p><p>“Yes. But it shouldn’t be the only… it shouldn’t be the only truth.”</p><p>“Isn’t there only one truth? One real truth?”</p><p>“That’s a debate for more than one night, and one bottle,” Anthony laughed. “Maybe when it comes to science, to… facts… but not to art. Not to… thoughts. Feelings. Emotions.”</p><p>The angel in the back of his mind wanted to protest. There must be one, true feeling. One right way. It was just that it was beyond their full comprehension, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t there.</p><p>But if it was beyond their comprehension, then was it truly possible to say it was ‘one’? If they couldn’t experience or understand? </p><p>“So if I think and feel something, and you think and feel something… hearing yours, it might create yet another? Rather than simply be yours, over mine?”</p><p>Anthony’s lips pursed. “That… yes, mon cher. That’s a good way to see it.”</p><p>“So?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t you see more of my work before you decide?”</p><p>“Will you show me?”</p><p>“Finish your drink, and I will.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Menage a... trois?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was perfect. Down to the creaky stairs, the damp patches on the walls. Anthony greeted the ladies who approached them as an old friend, but nothing more. He tossed a few coins and compliments, but nothing more. </p>
<p>Oddly, that helped.</p>
<p>Up into the attic, which clearly got lots of light in the day. Canvases, stretched out parchment, pinned up sketches. Even a few small sculptures in unfinished clay. The living area seemed to be minimal, and behind a tattered curtain dividing the room off. Everywhere there could be signs of creativity, there was.</p>
<p>Paint pots. Jars of brushes. Folios of bound sheets. It was a chaotic nightmare, and Ezra loved it. Loved. He could spend months in here and only scratch the surface.</p>
<p>And that was before he even looked at the art itself. That was just the room and furniture and accessories.</p>
<p>“Forgive the mess.”</p>
<p>“No, I shan’t,” he insisted. “It’s perfect.”</p>
<p>Anthony laughed, then, and lifted a hand to rub at his head. “You’re a strange one.”</p>
<p>“I suppose that’s why I feel at home here, then,” he said, running his fingers over the broken circle of a palette. </p>
<p>He could be very happy here. It called to something, something he hadn’t known had a voice to reply.</p>
<p>“So?”</p>
<p>“So?”</p>
<p>“The pictures?”</p>
<p>Oh, yes.</p>
<p>He was here to appraise Anthony’s repertoire. To assess his theme, his motivation, his style.</p>
<p>Ezra paced slowly around, looking at hasty line-sketches of people. Character studies, that all seemed to focus on the awkwardness of movement. Or, the extremes of it. Rotund gentlemen, emaciated workers. Little old women bent over umbrellas for walking sticks. No faces defined, just the sharp lines of their forms and the clothes that folded around them. </p>
<p>Bright splashes of colour elsewhere. Explosions like fireworks or supernovas. Those blended into flowers a step away from real, which assaulted the mind with colours so vibrant they almost had a scent. Trees. Landscapes. </p>
<p>But more than that, there was a gap in many of the works. A palpable absence. At a table filled with people, one chair. In front of a mirror painted, no one to be reflected back. Gaps. Holes. Empty space.</p>
<p>It was almost… painful. It felt like longing, like… loneliness. Ezra swallowed painfully, wondering why that was.</p>
<p>“Something is… missing.”</p>
<p>From the tightness in Anthony’s lips, he’d said more than he’d wanted. Unless he’d wanted it known. Why invite him here, and let him see, if not to be seen? To be known? Why let others lay eyes on your art, if you didn’t have something to say?</p>
<p>“Y-yes.”</p>
<p>“Do you know what---”</p>
<p>“<i>Yes</i>.”</p>
<p>Ezra paused. And then thought back to the day ‘they’ met. And the sketch.</p>
<p>That was pure wishful thinking, though.</p>
<p>Wasn’t it?</p>
<p>“Who--”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t know,” Anthony said, and he walked over to the soft clay. It needed slick to be remoulded, but he pushed a finger in all the same. “He can’t know.”</p>
<p>Well. Not if it was as Ezra suspected. ‘He’. Two men could - and did - keep company that way, but it wasn’t easy, by all accounts. And Anthony clearly thought it was impossible.</p>
<p>“Have you never tried to tell him?”</p>
<p>“<i>No</i>. Look. I can’t. I - he can’t, so…” An arm gestured at the art. “I can’t have him, so I do this. It… stops me from really drinking myself to death. And… I’m in good company with the other hopeless romantics.”</p>
<p>Oh that was so painful. To love so much, but to know you couldn’t? Couldn’t even say, let alone know if it was returned? </p>
<p>All thoughts of Heaven and Hell were gone, for the moment, caught up in this pale, wasting figure, so full of love that it burst past his fingers and onto canvas. Achingly adoring a distant, unattainable goal. And instead of bitter, he’d become beautiful.</p>
<p>That feeling again. As if the world was singing, as if he could hear things he normally couldn’t. As if there were patterns in clouds, and raindrops, and if he could only grasp the threads enough, the whole of reality would make so much sense. </p>
<p>Just. Just out of reach. A revelation in the waiting, and he just steps away from reaching it. </p>
<p>“Your work is beautiful. It is… a gift. Even if the intended recipient can’t see it.”</p>
<p>“Hah… well. They say contentment is the enemy of art, or something.”</p>
<p>Ezra perched on the edge of a couch, covered in protective cloth and that splattered with paint. “I don’t agree.”</p>
<p>“No?”</p>
<p>“When I feel good, I want to create just as much.”</p>
<p>“But why would you make anything, if everything was perfect? Aren’t you trying to - to repair something? Or explain? Or fill a hole?”</p>
<p>Ezra pondered it. “I felt more like I was celebrating, than… fixing.”</p>
<p>Anthony threw his head back in a bark of a laugh. “Right. Two truths, after all. It seems you’re the optimist, and I’m the pessimist.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps. But if the end result is beauty, and happiness, then what matters the cause?”</p>
<p>“Which is why your art will please, and mine will depress.” Anthony clapped his hands together. “Maybe you are the artist, and I am the student.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t--”</p>
<p>“Yes. I shall paint you.”</p>
<p>“M-me?”</p>
<p>“You will be my muse. To Hell with <i>him</i>. You are here. And you are alive. And you are happy. Why shouldn’t I choose you?”</p>
<p>Because you are in love with ‘him’. Ezra couldn’t bring himself to say it, but he felt it like knives to the heart. Him. I am second-fiddle. I am the backup, the fallback. I am the contingency.</p>
<p>“Because… you should create what you must create.”</p>
<p>“And I <i>must</i> use <b>you</b>.”</p>
<p>Ezra pulled his knees together, self-consciously. He was nothing. A rich boy, waltzing through the lives of the less well-off. Free because of luck, whilst others struggled. </p>
<p>(An angel. Graced with freedom.)</p>
<p>“I’m not sure--”</p>
<p>But Anthony had grasped an easel and his charcoal, and pushed up his sleeves higher still. The lighting was poor, and his glasses slipped down his nose to reveal the amber ones below. They were lit by a sort of manic hunger, and Ezra’s jaw dropped in surprise.</p>
<p>Anthony was… like that, caught in the storm of his own creativity? He was alive. Beyond alive. He was burning with intensity, and every sweep of his wrist was a symphony carved into the world, set to the lips and fingers of an unseen orchestra.</p>
<p>Beautiful. Insane. Alive. Driven by a love that was impossible to ignore.</p>
<p>Driven… by him? Or still by the absence of the other?</p>
<p>He didn’t know. Ezra was captivated by the dance, and he felt that aching, empty space himself. The missing piece that the other was seeking to fill. </p>
<p>It was.</p>
<p>It was… beyond anything he could remember experiencing. </p>
<p>And when it was over, he felt punch-drunk and lost. Lost on waves of something greater than he could ever put to words. He wanted to write, but he had no idea how, or what. Just.</p>
<p>Just from watching him draw.</p>
<p>How did he manage to exist, Anthony, with all these things brimming up inside?</p>
<p>“It’s finished. At least, the sketch is. I’d like to do a proper sitting with you, if…”</p>
<p>Ezra found himself nodding, and he wobbled to his feet to look.</p>
<p>It was him, on the page, and it wasn’t. There was more to this picture than he could ever see in a mirror. How could you explain? Words were not the right medium. This was… this was…</p>
<p>“Oh, my dear, do you really see me that way?”</p>
<p>“No. There’s more. I’m just…” His fingers smeared black streaks into his hair, and rubbed across his brow.</p>
<p>Ezra retrieved his handkerchief unthinkingly, reaching to dab the other’s brow. “You’ve made a mess of your hair.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Right.”</p>
<p>“I… would you like…?”</p>
<p>Anthony turned a half-rotation away, his hands lifting to unfasten the bow at his nape. His hair bundled out like rivers of iron-red water, his fingers brusquely combing through.</p>
<p>It was a travesty. Ezra clucked at him, and pushed the hands back. It was entirely inappropriate for him to comb his fingers through those locks, to brush over his scalp and tease the curls down his shoulders. He did it anyway, and caught the hissed intake of breath when he did. </p>
<p>His eyes skittered to the picture, again. Almost haloed in light, as if he was larger than himself, or perhaps filling a bigger hole. One was more appealing than the other. An expression of such intensity, eyes that sparkled, and… this was not about loss. This was about hope.</p>
<p>Anthony turned under his slowing hands, and pressed his lips softly to Ezra’s cheek. </p>
<p>So. Close. He clutched at the soft mane, wondering if he could - should - would it be decent if he -</p>
<p>But Anthony slipped back from his grasp. “You are too sweet, mon cher Monsieur Ezra. But I have kept you much too long. If I have not presumed too much, perhaps you would come back tomorrow? At six o’clock, when there is still light?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he breathed, his stomach in a complete whirlwind. “Yes. I’ll be here.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Ezra didn’t remember the walk home. Or if he saw anyone, or anyone saw him. The next few hours were a blur, a crazy fit of inspiration that left his fingers inkstained, and his shoulders hunched, and his back cramped. </p>
<p>He half filled one journal with nonsense, nonsense he was certain to hate (or need to prune) when he came back to his senses, but! It was!</p>
<p>It was so liberating! And so good! To let his mind wander and to pull together images and strands. Long connections between vast distances. Echoes of the songs of others, of the paintings and sculptures and poems and books and everything else he’d ever seen. Maybe he added nothing that hadn’t been said before, but it was his saying, and he had to do it. Had to join his voice to the choir. Had to.</p>
<p>When he sat back, he stared at the pages in open wonder.</p>
<p>It was.</p>
<p>It was so, so good. He ached, and his eyes were gritty, and he was hungry enough to eat for three months without breathing between, and he could feel where Anthony’s lips had touched him.</p>
<p>Oh, foolish thing that he was. He’d pecked his cheek, nothing more. Anthony was in love with this other, with this - this - </p>
<p>With -</p>
<p>Was it?</p>
<p>Could it be?</p>
<p>Had Crowley been so in love with Aziraphale that he’d had to move that affection into some other vessel? Some other self, one which could pine in the confines of a society that understood? It would fit, after all. The male lover, longing for another. </p>
<p>Because he could be as easily ‘she’. Crowley had never been as set in one form as Aziraphale had, and with the custom for such love to be unspoken and not acknowledged, he had to think that it was deliberate. Or, at least, not shied away from. </p>
<p>He couldn’t. He couldn’t be in love with him.</p>
<p>It was…</p>
<p>True.</p>
<p>True in the ‘this is a fact and cannot be denied’ way, not in a ‘art is subjective and I like this but not that’ way. </p>
<p>Crowley loved him. How could he not? In whatever way he did, he did. </p>
<p>Why else would he have approached him, that day, on the wall? Alright, he hadn’t been in love then, but he’d been open to whatever they were. And again. And again. And again.</p>
<p>Seeking him out, despite their ‘differences’. Spending time with him. Telling him things he’d surely told no other soul. Begging to bridge the gap between them, to turn their individual needs and tasks into one, joint one.</p>
<p>Saving him. Dining with him.</p>
<p>If their lives were shorter, perhaps it would have been more condensed and obvious, but now it was so obvious as to sting like he’d been hit in the face with the bells of Notre Dame. </p>
<p>And Aziraphale realised he loved him back.</p>
<p>So why this - this - charade? Why this persona? Had he planned to be walked in upon? Had he machinated their meeting? Was this all some intricate plot? Or was he honestly so afraid of rejection that it had been easier to separate it into another part, another person, and to live the life out there, in the bars and cafes?</p>
<p>What did that say about them, that the only time Aziraphale had felt confident enough to put pen to paper himself had been as Ezra, and not ‘himself’? Even though Ezra ‘was’ him, he also wasn’t. </p>
<p>It was ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! He wanted to march down to those lodgings, storm into the attic, and tell him the game was over. Over!</p>
<p>But--</p>
<p>But.</p>
<p>Then came the next thought. The thought that said, ‘there’s a reason he’s doing this’. </p>
<p>That said, ‘you cannot love a demon, and he cannot love an angel’. </p>
<p>That said, ‘Heaven and Hell would never allow it’.</p>
<p>Aziraphale slammed the journals into the dresser again, and snapped himself clean, and went to Versaille.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Comme deux et deux font quatre</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ezra did not attend the attic as planned. Ezra was not around at all. Aziraphale went on a spree of miracles and even temptations, just because he could. He flooded Heaven’s inbox with all the reports of his good deeds, and wondered why they couldn’t tell he’d balanced them out with an equal number of misdeeds. </p>
<p>Didn’t they notice? Didn’t they care?</p>
<p>Wasn’t either side actually interested in the true ending? Was this all just puppetry? A see-saw balancing act? Would they even know if he lied and reported things he hadn’t done, or hadn’t even been done without intervention?</p>
<p>What if he reported he’d brought back the dodo? Or that he’d converted all of the first arrondissement to the cloth? Or that he’d eliminated the pox?</p>
<p>What if he reported he’d turned Crowley into an aardvark?</p>
<p>Yes, it was all really rather silly. And why? Why did he do these things?</p>
<p>Because it was the ‘right’ thing to do. To do ‘good’. </p>
<p>Of course he believed in ‘good’. Or, rather: good. He believed in kindness, charity, truth, love… compassion, forgiveness…</p>
<p>It was just… it was… the truth of it was more complicated, or perhaps the truth was simple and the world was complicated. </p>
<p>Heaven sometimes - not that he could criticise <i>Her</i> or the <i>Plan</i> - but… plagues? Floods? Salt pillars? Banishments? Wars? Cold tea? The last was influenced by him realising he’d let this cup go cold as well, and he miracled it hot again in consternation. </p>
<p>It was - it was simply that he was not important enough to understand. And faith was - was - essential. And you had to just… keep trying. And hoping. And…</p>
<p>And…</p>
<p>Ignore the fact that a demon on Earth was actively putting more good out than most of the whole blasted holy order of angels up above. Admittedly it was quid pro quo, but if he could still be responsible for the playing field remaining level instead of tipping too far to the dark, then why was he evil?</p>
<p>And could you call good deeds he did, evil? Because he did them? And if so, didn’t that make all of Aziraphale’s good deeds just as evil? Or lacking in good?</p>
<p>His fingers turned white around the delicate cup he threatened to shatter.</p>
<p>It was impossible. Everything was impossible.</p>
<p>There was no such thing as truth.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“Oh. So I didn’t scare you off, then.”</p>
<p>“I’m terribly sorry,” Ezra said, when he arrived far too many weeks later in the attic. He’d lurked outside several nights, before he’d plucked up the courage to approach. </p>
<p>“It’s okay.” Anthony was faint, distant. His hair neat, his clothing unfussed. </p>
<p>Had he been creating, still? Had he painted a lack of Ezra? Or had…</p>
<p>“I was… overwhelmed. With the responsibility of being… your muse.”</p>
<p>“Hmm?”</p>
<p>“It’s… your art is so very… beautiful. And I - I did not feel as if I should intrude. When… when your other inspiration…”</p>
<p>“Isn’t here, either,” Anthony pointed out. “But you were.”</p>
<p>“And I left. And I - I regret that most deeply.” Ezra wrung his hands in front of him. “May… may I sit?”</p>
<p>The painter shrugged.</p>
<p>Ezra fought the urge to bolt, and forced himself to sit.</p>
<p>“I do mean that I am sorry. I cannot… I cannot do anything other than promise I will not do it again.”</p>
<p>“And I believe this because…?”</p>
<p>“Because… I swear on my honour?” He hadn’t anticipated this question. “Because I truly feel wretched for adding to your… for making you feel that… for leaving you.”</p>
<p>Anthony’s shoulders loosened, just a little. He’d swaddled himself in armour against the rejection, Ezra realised. Already despised or unwanted, the one he’d confessed it to had promptly repeated the process. It was a wonder he didn’t have a face full of white spirit, or thinner.</p>
<p>“You owe me some poetry,” Anthony said, instead. </p>
<p>“I do.”</p>
<p>“And I’m guessing you don’t have--”</p>
<p>This was about honesty. Sincerity. (Even if they weren’t honestly their whole selves, right now.) Anthony had trusted him with this, with his deepest thoughts. And Ezra had run away and left him to feel this pain alone. </p>
<p>If he wanted to earn trust, he had to be prepared to hurt, too.</p>
<p>Inside of his jacket, he retrieved the journal. It was rammed with all the things he’d written that night, and nothing since. He hadn’t been able to put pen to paper, or even look at paper, since. The thought had made him nauseous, and the words simply hadn’t been there to come out.</p>
<p>He offered the book over.</p>
<p>Anthony’s fingertip brushed his as he took it, and Ezra wanted to scream and cry and run all over again. He sat and pushed his thighs down onto the edge of his seat, until his toes tingled in his shoes. Ran his tongue over the rear of his teeth - why had he never memorised the shape, the pattern? - and felt every inhalation and exhalation as a torture to his windpipe. </p>
<p>Anthony leafed through his words, through… much more. Through his thoughts, his dreams, his hopes, his fears. His secret self, kept far from the world. Saw how he could wax poetic over the drip of candle-wax over the lip of a holder, or the flames in the other’s hair. The shape and power of the artist’s fingers. The way his eyes could push beyond the film and into the substance behind.</p>
<p>Oh, he was so… so… ridiculous. So very fanciful and conceited. It was nothing new, but it was his. It was how he had felt, and now he was certain that Anthony would call it drivel and laugh. Or be offended. Or try to be polite, but secretly hate it. </p>
<p>Longing for something lost. An innocence, maybe. A sense of certainty, surely. Anthony was missing someone, but Ezra was missing… something. </p>
<p>Because ‘someone’ was right there.</p>
<p>He looked up as he felt the pages still, and his mouth was as dry as the Nile in drought. As heavy as Sisyphus’ stone. As painful as if he was asked to keep a lie inside, and never open his mouth to spill the truth. </p>
<p>Anthony was…</p>
<p>Were there tears? In his eyes? A hand pushed the lenses up, and swiped at the lids, capturing the moisture. </p>
<p>“Anthony?”</p>
<p>“W-when did you--?”</p>
<p>“That night. I was up all night. And - and then - then I ran away.”</p>
<p>“Because…”</p>
<p>“Because it was too much! Because - you read! You saw what I wrote!”</p>
<p>“I did. And it might be the finest, most authentic thing I’ve ever read.”</p>
<p>“It - what?”</p>
<p>“This…” he clutched the little book to his breast. “This is precious. And… I… understand. Why you felt you had to run.”</p>
<p>“You… do?”</p>
<p>Anthony nodded, then moved slowly to sit beside him. Still clutching the book. “The way you write… that is how… that is why I had to draw <i>you</i> when I saw you. The gap - the space - it was you I needed to fill in. To complete the picture.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t him. It was the other, the first love. </p>
<p>Or the original hole had been. What if he could fill it better?</p>
<p>“Anthony…”</p>
<p>“Tell me to stop.”</p>
<p>“I can’t,” he whispered, as the book was pressed between them as Anthony turned into him.</p>
<p>He hardly dared breathe as he felt a hand cup his cheek, and tease at the hair around his ear. Tiny touches of lips to his, making promises and songs and requests and sparks. Ezra moaned, agreeing and adding his own voice. He let the other push him backwards, falling onto the large couch and surrendering to the kisses that stole his breath and his mind. </p>
<p>It was so oddly comforting to feel pinned down and trapped, even though the taller man weighed barely more than a pinch of salt. He was warm, and breathing, and vibrant and alive. A hand by his face bunched into the couch to hold him up, the other moving to slide down his side. It stopped near his waist, and then started to--</p>
<p>Ezra - Aziraphale - flinched. </p>
<p>Did - did he intend--? He wasn’t - ah - intact. No, that was incorrect. He was <i>incomplete</i>. He had never needed, and so never made the effort. And with the other on top of him, breathing heavily and now paused, ready to bolt in flight, it was not truly a good time to work out if, or how.</p>
<p>“Is this… too much? Too… fast?”</p>
<p>“Y-yes. The - the second. I’m not s-saying I don’t… just…”</p>
<p>Anthony was at the far end of the couch, rolling his sleeves down compulsively, looking like he might turn into dust at the merest gust of wind. </p>
<p>Ezra awkwardly sat up, too, his hands tugging at the edge of his shirt. How did he explain? How could he? It was preposterous. And if he had the - if he’d already been - well - complete… would he have agreed?</p>
<p>“I - I am not s-saying ‘no’, it - I just - could we… go… more slowly?”</p>
<p>“I ssshouldn’t have--”</p>
<p>“Anthony,” he said, as softly as he could, and reached very, very gingerly over to lower his hand onto the other’s knee. “I have not… before. I have not… wanted to, you see. And I should like to - to - we have only just met and… for me it is… I should like to get to know you?”</p>
<p>“You - you want to - what?”</p>
<p>“I - do not know what you prefer, but - but for me, I should… I would rather it be - I am… I suppose, rather traditional.” It caused a little bubble of a chuckle. “I should like to… court? To… get to know more of you? If we are to… be a couple. If - if you are - if you are interested in <i>that</i>, and not purely… ah, not simply carnal knowledge…”</p>
<p>Anthony’s eyes lifted above the rims of his glasses, his lips moving silently as he launched curses against himself. His palms hit his face, smacking the spectacles in, and a tiny little ‘ow’ was the result.</p>
<p>“Anthony?”</p>
<p>“Can - can you just… forget that I’m the biggest imbecile in the arrondissement? Or - or the world?”</p>
<p>“Well, if you are, I must be next in line.”</p>
<p>He dropped his hands, his glasses askew. Ezra leaned over, pausing before he removed them, making sure he consented. </p>
<p>“It’s - when - it’s difficult when you are… different,” Anthony said, very slowly. His eyes blinked in the dim light, his face hollow and still very afraid. “To find someone who might share your… desires… and to whom you are--” Another chuckle. “I never thought anyone would, least of all… someone like you.”</p>
<p>“Someone… like me?” </p>
<p>Alright. So he was fishing for compliments. But Ezra was new to this, and less confident than he tried to appear. </p>
<p>“Yes. Someone - someone - you really want me to do this?”</p>
<p>“If you find me appealing, describing how should not be difficult.” He was teasing, coy, and the hammering in his chest was morphing into a different beat. </p>
<p>“I’m not the poet,” Anthony replied, his shoulders lowering, the defensive barrier cracking just a little. “Words are not my thing.”</p>
<p>“If you should try, for me, I would be honoured. And perhaps, I will give my hand over to drawing you, so that you feel superior in your second endeavour.”</p>
<p>That made the light go back on in his eyes, devilish and eager, and he leapt to his feet to retrieve a sketch book. It was better quality than Ezra had seen him use for his idle work before, and he wondered if it was new, because of his journals?</p>
<p>A silly notion, but one he liked.</p>
<p>“I won’t insult you with my limericks,” Anthony said, as he began to pose most ridiculously. “So, consider it vers libre.”</p>
<p>“How very <i>gauche</i>,” Ezra teased, drawing a circle for a face, then huffing and trying to elongate it. It looked messy, so he drew hair which looked like straw, and bit his lip in amusement.</p>
<p>“You are… dignified. Educated. Intelligent.”</p>
<p>Nice things, but lots of people were those. Anthony’s eyes were not different sizes and heights, but it was a little late for that, so maybe he was winking. </p>
<p>“And… you are ridiculously handsome. Have you not got a looking-glass at home? Those eyes so bright… like… stars or something. And your hair that I just…” His fingers scrunched through the air. “Oh, I want to touch it so badly. To put your head in my lap and play with your curls… to see your smile as you read to me…”</p>
<p>That was more appealing, and maybe he should never have agreed to this insane trade, because he was making a fool of himself. Anthony’s beautiful face was made to look like a child’s rendition. Perhaps paint would have been better, then he could have done longer strokes or blended patches, and pretended he was one of the Impressionists, and not that he couldn’t actually, accurately depict a barn door. </p>
<p>Anthony had yet to see, however, and was continuing to detail his finer qualities. “You have a sense of humour - no one has made me laugh like you - and you are kind, so kind, and your words show how much love there is inside of you… love for everything. It… it overflows, like a wine cup when the vessel is filled by one already too deep in their cups… leaking over the sides and staining your fingers… you… you <i>glow</i> with how big your heart is, and being near you… it is… it is like seeing the sun for the first time, and knowing that you could…”</p>
<p>His eyes were tearing up, and he could see Anthony’s were, too. “That I could?”</p>
<p>“Yes. When I thought no one could. And maybe it’s because you could love anything, because your heart is too big, but-- I could dream…”</p>
<p>“You… didn’t think anyone could? Love you?”</p>
<p>“Show me your picture,” Anthony huffed, his face red suddenly with the self-disclosure. </p>
<p>“No. You didn’t think anyone could? And you - you want me only because I might?”</p>
<p>“No! I - I didn’t think anyone <i>could</i>, and then the man of my <b>dreams</b> turns out to actually, literally be an angel from above who--”</p>
<p>The word was a mistake, and Ezra froze.</p>
<p>“You’re more than I could ever have dreamt of,” Anthony mumbled. “And - and… I can’t stop thinking about you. I… don’t laugh! I’ve never felt the way I feel when I’m near you.”</p>
<p>His chest was so tight it felt like the Eiffel tower was built over his ribs. He couldn’t finish the picture, clasping his mouth with his hands. “Anthony…”</p>
<p>“If you need me to go slow, or - or respect your boundaries… I will. Just… please don’t run away again. I want… I want you in my life, however you’ll permit it to happen.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Anthony… yes. I do want that. Please… forgive my skittishness. I simply - I simply want to do this… right. And I - I do not doubt your intentions. It is my own, foolish fears that hold me back.”</p>
<p>“Can I see your picture?”</p>
<p>“It’s terrible.”</p>
<p>“It won’t be, because you did it.”</p>
<p>Ezra turned it, and watched as Anthony’s face revolved through amusement, sentiment, back to amusement and into something oddly tender. “You have a unique style.”</p>
<p>“I can’t draw.”</p>
<p>“Everyone can draw.”</p>
<p>“But not everyone can draw so you can recognise the thing they are trying to draw,” Ezra grumbled.</p>
<p>“I can tell it’s me. And - maybe it wouldn’t work for the police to use and identify me, but it shows you know what I look like, and that… that you really love my hair.”</p>
<p>“Don’t tease me,” he said, pulling the scribble away.</p>
<p>“I’m not. Technical mastery is one thing. Emotional truth is another. And this means more to me than anything a great master could do. Because it’s from you.”</p>
<p>Ezra’s cheeks ached from the smiling, and he put the book to one side. “Anthony… you said, before… that you might like to play with my hair?”</p>
<p>Wide, hopeful eyes. “Would Monsieur Ezra allow such a forward gesture?”</p>
<p>“He would. From Monsieur Anthony.”</p>
<p>The artist moved, arranging himself hopefully, offering his lap. Ezra carefully lowered his head down, and wriggled until he was comfortable. Clever, clever fingers started to caress his scalp, and he moaned at the tingling sensations. He gazed up lovingly, wondering how he had captured such a brilliant, bright, creative soul. So giving, and forgiving. He was beautiful, and he was perfect. </p>
<p>“What are you thinking?” Anthony asked, as he ran one digit over the shell of one ear.</p>
<p>“About how very dear you already are to me. And how I should like to see how much more we can be.”</p>
<p>“And?”</p>
<p>“And how I should like to be your muse, and you mine. And take trips on rivers. And dine in fine establishments. And introduce you to society. And dance with you, and take you to the theatre, and take you to the circus, and--”</p>
<p>“You’d be seen with me? In public?”</p>
<p>“Others would die of envy, if they knew what a catch I had in you.”</p>
<p>Of course, others would also curdle with disgust. Much as he liked the fantasy of living openly with his paramour on his arm, he knew it could not be. They were destined for lives of innuendo and suggestion in public, and ardour in private. </p>
<p>“You are a dreamer,” the other accused, kissing his forehead and draping arms around his shoulders, to clasp the hands coming up to meet his. “I would like that. I would like that very much. But if your… social circle… were too envious?”</p>
<p>“Then they would not remain my circle,” he insisted. “If we are truly serious… I mean it.”</p>
<p>“And your… family?”</p>
<p>Ezra tensed. “I will pick my family.” And I will pick you, was the unspoken addition.</p>
<p>Anthony slid lower, pouring around his edges, cuddling the scholar to his chest. He pulled his head below his chin, and nuzzled affectionately at his neck.</p>
<p>“And if I should say… that I… if I should… if I say…?”</p>
<p>Ezra lifted his fingers to his lips, kissing the knuckles. “You wouldn’t need to, for me to know. But if - and when - you did… I should be extremely flattered.”</p>
<p>More nose to his temple, and the heaviest, most contented sigh he’d ever witnessed. “Then, I do.”</p>
<p>“And I, also,” he echoed, feeling happier and safer than he remembered ever feeling.</p>
<p>They lay that way all night, the words drifting further and further apart, until Ezra could keep his eyes open no longer.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Le cinq a sept</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ezra woke up, bundled in a thick, woolen blanket. His shoes had been removed at some point, and he’d been divested of his jacket, but otherwise he was entirely dressed and proper. </p>
<p>(Aziraphale did not really sleep. Ezra did.)</p>
<p>He looked up to see Anthony scratching away at a canvas, and the other man startled when their eyes met.</p>
<p>“Oh. Sorry.”</p>
<p>“Why sorry?” he asked, sitting up with the blanket around him.</p>
<p>“I didn’t want to wake you too soon. And… you looked so peaceful.”</p>
<p>“Were you painting me?”</p>
<p>At the nod, Ezra tied the blanket around his shoulders and padded quietly across to the canvas. “May I?”</p>
<p>“It’s not as good as yours, but--”</p>
<p>He snuck around to rest his chin on his shoulder, arching onto the balls of his feet to see. One arm pushed out of the cocoon of layers and found a hip to pull back against him. He stared at the picture, taking in the fine details of his face, with the shafts of light cutting over his contours. </p>
<p>It almost looked as if he were breathing. </p>
<p>“It’s incredible,” he said. “Is there anything for breakfast?”</p>
<p>Anthony turned to peck his cheek. “No, but there is a boulangerie around the corner. I could fetch fresh croissants?”</p>
<p>“That would be lovely. And you have somewhere I can freshen up?”</p>
<p>“I do. My home is your home. Please… help yourself, mon cher Ezra.”</p>
<p>He bounced his way to the door, and blew a kiss from his fingertips. Ezra giggled, and felt his stomach skipping along with his new paramour. </p>
<p>He’d spent the night. With Anthony. Cuddled up in his arms. And he knew that if he wasn’t careful, he would never, ever leave.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Ezra did not leave. Not for well over a week. So much so that he thought, perhaps, if he simply stayed forever that nothing could possibly ever go wrong in the universe again. </p>
<p>His ‘friends’ did not seem to notice his absence. He spent the days eating, walking in the sunshine, feeding the ducks, and watching the flowers grow. Anthony scribbled and doodled, he dabbled in verse and pensive thoughts.</p>
<p>They dined. They wined. They danced when there was music, and laughed and talked when there was none. He slept in Anthony’s bed, and he woke in Anthony’s arms, or under his brush. If he didn’t feel him around him, he would stretch and smile and give him a topic to paint.</p>
<p>It was glorious, and responsibility was nowhere to be seen.</p>
<p>At least, not until he was in the market, picking out fresh fruit and vegetables, and a presence to his side made him jump.</p>
<p>“Aziraphale.”</p>
<p>Ezra froze, startled, his hand curled around a pear. </p>
<p>“I - I beg your pardon?”</p>
<p>His mind careened when he looked at a familiar face. It was not happy, and neither was he. </p>
<p>“You haven’t been reporting in.”</p>
<p>It had hardly been that long. Surely? He’d been missing for much longer before. He’d send the occasional report off to stave off external influence, but he’d…</p>
<p>Versaille. He’d gone on a miracle spree, then suddenly vanished without a single word more to keep the top brass at bay. </p>
<p>Merde.</p>
<p>“I h-haven’t?” </p>
<p>It was difficult, to handle the sudden mental sideways step. He’d been Ezra, and happy, and now he was Aziraphale, and anxious. Inside of his mind was a screaming mess of horror, terror, outrage and self-loathing. He wanted - oh - how he wanted to do what Ezra had promised Anthony, but faced with the Archangel Gabriel, how could he?</p>
<p>He would kill him. Or rip the Heavenly light right from him. Send him tumbling down into the infernal abyss, and then neither Crowley, nor Anthony would ever want him again.</p>
<p>“T-they must have gotten… mislaid. Ahah, you know… earthly failures… probably a solar flare or, ah, a surfeit of prayers…”</p>
<p>Gabriel arched a brow. “Why are you… handling fruit?”</p>
<p>Because it is tasty, fresh, and delicious? And makes good tarts? And if She didn’t want people to eat any fruit, why had She made it so delicious and ready to access in the first--</p>
<p>“To give to the needy,” he blurted out. “In the church.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“So they… do not starve?” The question was so ridiculous he almost couldn’t believe it had been posed. </p>
<p>Gabriel shrugged. Aziraphale supposed it didn’t matter to him <i>when</i> souls went in either direction, just that they did. Didn’t he realise that a hungry belly was less able to support a lofty mind? That ideals and good deeds usually were easier to accomplish if the body was able to move, to act? Basic nutrition should be - well - basic! </p>
<p>“So you’ll be reporting on all the successes, when you’re done?”</p>
<p>“Of course. Of course. Of course.” He needed to say it less, but it was out now, and there was no taking it back. </p>
<p>“Good. You’re taking one for the team, remember. You keep at it like this, and the Plan will surely succeed.”</p>
<p>The Plan. Yes. Plan. He smiled, thinly, and nodded. “The Plan. Yes.”</p>
<p>“There’s a good fellow. You… do what you do best.”</p>
<p>Gabriel left, and Aziraphale’s fist went through the fruit.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>How could he have been so foolish? How? So selfish as to think he could live for himself. He’d been so <i>careful</i> all these years. A pinch here, a push there, but never too much that it couldn’t pass unnoticed. </p>
<p>All these years, and one idiotic month in Paris had almost ruined everything.</p>
<p>He was a complete and utter buffoon.</p>
<p>Having paid the fruitmonger, he’d run back to Anthony’s place, to find him missing. He scrawled a quick note that said he had family business to attend to, but that he would be back as soon as possible, and left the supplies as a gift.</p>
<p>He’d promised not to run, but this was only temporary, wasn’t it? It wasn’t forever, and he’d told him, and if he could find a way to balance the two pulls this would… it would be okay.</p>
<p>It was what he told himself as he hurried back to his lodgings, dodging any comments or questions, and threw himself into as many hasty miracles as he could. Some were, perhaps, a little less effective in the long-term than he would normally like, but he had no time to pause and think.</p>
<p>Aziraphale had no idea how long he’d been at things when he heard a soft rustle near his door, and when he saw the note pushed under he opened it to see Crowley retreating.</p>
<p>It was Crowley, very clearly, though he nearly didn’t stop until the angel cleared his throat loudly. And then his shoulders came up into a hunch, and he slowly turned to look over one.</p>
<p>“Did you not wish to talk?”</p>
<p>“Can’t.” Crowley’s voice was pinched. Painful.</p>
<p>“Can’t, or won’t?”</p>
<p>“Head Office. Want… want me back.”</p>
<p>Back? Into Hell? Which Crowley despised as much as-- “You can’t!”</p>
<p>“I can’t? Angel… listen to yourself. I ‘can’t’. I must.”</p>
<p>“But - but you - but the - the Arrangement?”</p>
<p>“Hasn’t been very ‘arranged’ for a bit, has it?”</p>
<p>On either end. “We could… recommence.”</p>
<p>“In a bit, maybe. After I’ve caught up. I just need to… I just need some time. To get them off my back. It won’t be long, then I’ll be back.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale had run off, first. He had no right to feel hurt.</p>
<p>He did, anyway.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Distance did not make the heart grow fonder, it made the angel panic.</p>
<p>It had not been that long since Crowley had gone missing for most of a century, really. And whilst, early on, they had gone long stretches without seeing one another… the further from Eden that time passed, the more of it they had spent together. </p>
<p>It wasn’t as if he had needed to see him every day. And it was normal for beings - er, people - to have time apart. </p>
<p>They had been closer recently than ever before, and even if it had been ‘Ezra and Anthony’, it…</p>
<p>It had been… nice. Better than nice. Freer than he could remember feeling, even if he’d been selfishly pursuing his own needs and ignoring the greater good.</p>
<p>If only he hadn’t been so self-absorbed. It was possible, wasn’t it, to serve his own needs and those of others? He didn’t really need to suffer, just to be kind?</p>
<p>Aziraphale stood in front of his book-shelf, his prized and most personal sanctuary in these lodgings. His favourite tomes: a mixture of Biblical errata, prophecy, folktales, inaccurate science and… the more romantic and whimsical. Those he felt a little guilty about, but he’d always tried to hold onto the idea that it showed the better side of Humanity as a whole. </p>
<p>He’d tried to join in. Admittedly, he would never dare publish his odd little attempts, because he was sure they would not be appreciated, and he would be utterly heartbroken as a result. </p>
<p>Why else would you publish, if not to receive the acclaim and adoration of the masses? Or your peers?</p>
<p>(And who, but Crowley, was even his peer?)</p>
<p>If he could… would he? Would he allow others to see something so deep and private? To see the way he thought, and felt? No matter how much he declared it to be fiction, or imaginary, he would always know he’d created it, and so it must come from somewhere inside. </p>
<p>It was happiness. It was. And how could that be wrong? </p>
<p>Only.</p>
<p>Only.</p>
<p>The longer they were apart, the more the doubts crept in. </p>
<p>The more he wondered if it really had been real, or as - as intense as it had felt - or if he’d been reading more into it. </p>
<p>It was real. It was.</p>
<p>It…</p>
<p>But…</p>
<p>It was ‘Ezra’ he loved. Wasn’t it. Right now, at least. </p>
<p>And Ezra was jealous, because he hadn’t been the first love. And Aziraphale was jealous, because he’d been left behind in favour of Ezra.</p>
<p>Which was ridiculous. Ezra was Aziraphale, and Aziraphale was Ezra.</p>
<p>Except… they weren’t. </p>
<p>Ezra was free. Free from any ties or constraints. Free to love, and laugh, and live for himself.</p>
<p>Aziraphale was <i>not</i> free, and never would be. Even if he allowed Ezra time to exist, there would always be the shadow of Heaven cast over him. </p>
<p>And Aziraphale was more. He was… he was a Principality. He had responsibilities, and beliefs, and duties. And Crowley must obviously want to oppose them (to some degree), even if it was just to keep the leeway he precariously held onto. </p>
<p>Loving Ezra was easy. Loving Aziraphale… was not. Hence why Anthony had been born in the first place.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be better if he didn’t remember? Or didn’t know? If he could wake up one morning and <i>just</i> be Ezra? And Anthony be only Anthony? If the first, missing love had never existed? Two humans, meeting, and falling in love, and living happily ever after? Or if he could find some way to reconcile this terrible situation, and negotiate some reasoned, sensible way to have the best of both worlds?</p>
<p>Aziraphale couldn’t acknowledge Ezra, though. And Ezra couldn’t acknowledge the angel. Not only would it be incredibly difficult to navigate for himself, but he wasn’t sure how Anthony and Crowley would take it. </p>
<p>It was a mess. And, perhaps, a mistake. </p>
<p>He would never be able to look at the demon the same way, now. Never be able to forget the fingers in his hair, the kisses on his lips. The sound he made when he slept peacefully, or the way he would always get crumbs around his lips when he ate fresh croissants. </p>
<p>He would never be able to forget the beautiful words that tumbled from his lips, or the longing he could see in every stroke on canvas. </p>
<p>Anthony was so very, very free with his heart, in a way Crowley had never been. For all the snake had followed him and solicited his company and assistance, it had always been couched in acceptable half-truths, or diverted attention, or sold in terms of end result. Bartered, bargained, excused. </p>
<p>Which was as much his own fault, as Crowley’s. There was no space in his mental rule book for ‘I would like to socialise with you as a companion’. Or, worse, ‘I would like to confide my true thoughts and feelings in you’. Or, worst of all, ‘I would like very much to spend the majority of my existence in or near your presence, laugh and drink and love with you. I would like to stare into your eyes for hours. I would like to tell you jokes. I would like to make ridiculous plans for our future together. I would like to consider an intimacy that is superficially physical, but which - for me - is actually about being truly myself and promising my never-ending love and loyalty to you. I would like to be yours, only yours, and for as long as time exists’. </p>
<p>Which. That was kind of what both Aziraphale and Ezra felt a consummation would be, at least for him (them?). </p>
<p>That final step, which was in some ways no different from scratching a point on the back that the other couldn’t reach for themselves, and yet… the meaning came from belief. </p>
<p>Some might choose to do it simply for pleasure, for the sensation of it. But Aziraphale did not come with the automatic ability, or associated drives. It would be a conscious choice, a deliberate one, and one he had decided meant more than other things could, or did. </p>
<p>He hadn’t. </p>
<p>He hadn’t made the step of… making… the necessary things. It had been so nice to just… be as they were, without the pressure of the other thing. Or without wondering if it meant as much to Anthony-Crowley as it did to he himself. </p>
<p>But was that because he wasn’t sure? He wasn’t committed? After all, if it meant forever to him, and he hadn’t been able - or willing - did it mean he didn’t… mean it?</p>
<p>Aziraphale sat at his bureau, in his room, ignoring the dresser drawer behind him. Ezra’s words burned unseen, heavy and accusing. </p>
<p>What would it mean? Which of them would it be? Would it always, only be Ezra and Anthony? Would he ever be able to say to the serpent that he, too, could be loved? That he <i>was</i>? When it could very well mean the end of both of them?</p>
<p>Hell would probably not mind, unless Crowley tried to… could you? Could you even return from Hell? Or - what would happen?</p>
<p>Heaven would <i>not</i> approve. Even if it meant softening the hellfire of a demon, they would never consider it acceptable. </p>
<p>It could very well mean the death of him. If they cast him down, after all, it would mean no barrier to their… their love affair. And Gabriel for one was spitef-- was… devout enough to ensure they did not get their happily ever after. </p>
<p>If Crowley could even love him, fallen.</p>
<p>Because, apparently, he couldn’t even love him properly like this. </p>
<p>It was impossible. It was all impossible. </p>
<p>Aziraphale closed his eyes, and wept, silently. </p>
<p>He could see no solution, no answer. Here was the flip side of love. On one: the sparkling, singing, beautiful world. On the other: the aching, jealous, fearful impossibility of ever truly being where you needed to be. </p>
<p>It was killing him. By degrees, it was killing him.</p>
<p>And he didn’t know he could ever let them go.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Etre au (trente) sixieme dessous</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Ezra was finally able to come back, he didn’t dare visit the attic to begin with. Instead, he haunted their watering holes, languishing over bottles and writing self-indulgent and plaintive verse.</p>
<p>Was this how Anthony had felt? Seeing the hole where someone should be? Pining away over a glass of liquid oblivion, wallowing in his own misery and unable to step away?</p>
<p>He understood, finally, that they had come full circle. He’d taught Anthony the skill of painting for joy, to celebrate what you loved. And Anthony had taught him the skill of capturing the grief, to mourn for what could not, or no longer, be. </p>
<p>There was a perverse sort of pleasure in it, one he had never truly understood before. Knowing it hurt, and going back to wallow in it, anyway. Roll around in the muck, and lie on his back, ignoring the starlight above his head. </p>
<p>Why would anyone choose to do that, he wondered? It was entirely ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t stop. All those tales where people had just done utterly insane things… he was beginning to see it was a drive. An urge, a call in the blood. No amount of reasoning could keep his fingers from scratching at the emotional wound.</p>
<p>A shadow fell across his hand, over the page, and he lifted his eyes to a pair hidden behind smoked glass.</p>
<p>“You didn’t come back.”</p>
<p>There was no accusation in the voice, only sadness.</p>
<p>“I’m here, now. I’m sorry, my dear, I had obligations.”</p>
<p>He could hear the recriminations that passed across his lover’s face in a blink. You promised. You said me above all others. You said the world could go hang.</p>
<p>But the world had a way of refusing to be hung.</p>
<p>“Are they complete?”</p>
<p>“For now,” he agreed, with a little tilt of his head to the free chair. </p>
<p>Anthony did not take it, and the simple refusal hurt like death by a thousand cuts. Was it truly his fault that he wasn’t entirely free? Was anyone? Ever?</p>
<p>“Fancy a walk?”</p>
<p>Ezra was not sure his legs would function enough for walking, but it was an invitation, and if he also turned it down, then… what?</p>
<p>“Yes,” he lied, and tidied his book away.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Why did it feel, as they strolled side by side, never touching, as if this was it? As if this was goodbye? Was Anthony planning on ending their love affair, too distraught by their interruptions to continue?</p>
<p>He could do better. Maybe if they could acknowledge this, ‘all’ of this? If they could discuss the unmentionable, confront that elephant who was not so much in the room, but holding a knife to their throats?</p>
<p>“You… may I speak freely?”</p>
<p>Ezra nodded, hopelessly, feeling the worst he thought it was possible to feel without simultaneously ceasing to exist. </p>
<p>“You have all the power. You know where I live. You can come, go, leave me until you need me again…”</p>
<p>But he did know where Ez-- where Aziraphale lived. Ezra, on the other hand, had no home. </p>
<p>Nowhere for Anthony to reach him.</p>
<p>His feet fumbled in the fallen leaves. “Oh.”</p>
<p>“I am at your mercy. A plaything. And when you are gone, I wonder: is this the time he never comes back? When he breaks his faith with me? What if you were run down by a carriage? Swept away in a storm? I should never know, lest some newspaper report your obituary.”</p>
<p>He could see it now, Anthony scouring the print, reading every name for some lost hope that another Human would remember Ezra. Or - morbidly - an angel decide that he had died, and signal it to the whole world. </p>
<p>“What do you want from me?” Ezra asked, and wished it didn’t sound so pugnacious. “Should I rent a property that would be - would be acceptable for others to see us in? Do you want a home? I could give you the keys to the place I am now, but the potential scandal--”</p>
<p>Anthony stopped walking. </p>
<p>He’d.</p>
<p>He’d admitted it. That the opinions of others weighed on him. That they mattered. He had promised not to.</p>
<p>“I am… the source of disgrace.”</p>
<p>“No! Anthony, no.” He reached for the other’s hands, clasping them fiercely. “Not to me. It is their disgrace for not accepting us. But I would rather shield you from prying, evil eyes.”</p>
<p>“I will never be what you truly need.”</p>
<p>“You are! Everything and more!”</p>
<p>Anthony pulled his hands back. It looked as if he were crying. “I care too much about you to ruin your whole life.”</p>
<p>“You would ruin it most by leaving.” He could not be saying this. The world was ending, the sky was falling, and Ezra knew he would not go on living without Anthony. To be permanently separated would be unbearable. He - he would <i>not</i> continue to exist. One way or another, Ezra would perish when their relationship did.</p>
<p>“I have only one thing to offer.” Anthony’s throat worked over tears he forced down. “Meet me at the first place we met. Tonight. Sharp at seven.”</p>
<p>“Anthony?”</p>
<p>“Please, mon cher. It is all I have left to give you.”</p>
<p>The taller man spun on his heel, and marched as fast as his long legs would take him.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Why did he feel like he was walking to his actual execution? The one (okay, the most recent) time he’d been slated for death, Crowley had appeared and saved him.</p>
<p>That had been France, too. And that time he’d had no concern whatsoever, no sense that things would go wrong. It would all be wonderful, and they’d have a jolly good time after.</p>
<p>Today, though, he tightened his tie and straightened the lines of his jacket to look as presentable as he could. He fluffed his hair, this way, then that. Then back again. Nothing he could do would hide the concern on his features, and he couldn’t school his expression to remove it. He was an open picture of misery. </p>
<p>This was not how you attracted a mate. Or kept one.</p>
<p>Ezra felt entirely out of place this time, like every scrap of fine fabric was a barrier between him and the normal patrons of the bar. The air was heavy with sweat, tobacco, stale wine, and the tang of distant sex. Disease, too, and despair. How had he not noticed these things before? Had he been so distant from the Human race that he hadn’t been able to see the suffering right beneath his very nose?</p>
<p>Anthony was not there.</p>
<p>Crowley was not there.</p>
<p>Or rather, they both were, and were not.</p>
<p>At the bar, unmistakeably prominent, he saw the gentle curves of a feminine figure. Corsetry pulled and pushed the shape of an hourglass into the flesh below. Long, flowing red hair that was topped by a circlet of golden chain, clasped behind the head and dripping down the curls. A single, feathery plume at one temple, adding height that really was not needed.</p>
<p>The dress scooped low down the spine, and flared out in various layers at the upper thigh. Fine stockings, heels that would kill a man just for looking at them. She was dressed as a dancer, a woman from the posters that papered the walls. He admired the effort, but he didn’t understand it.</p>
<p>What did he say? Did he acknowledge him - her? Did he use a name he knew, or did he introduce himself? </p>
<p>Ezra froze, hands working over invisible dough, until the woman turned. </p>
<p>The glasses were smaller, more dainty, and over the rims he could see the shadow and long lashes. Rich, ruby red lips and blushed cheeks. She was beautiful, by the current fashions, but she had been beautiful before. Or handsome. Or…</p>
<p>“Ezra?”</p>
<p>The voice was a little lighter, but not much. </p>
<p>Why? Did she think Ezra - or Aziraphale - honestly would feel differently based on physical appearance, or perceived gender? </p>
<p>Well, Ezra didn’t - except - he did - and -</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“I was asked to take you to see the show tonight.” She dipped her head to the poster. The Moulin Rouge. </p>
<p>He’d never been, but simply because it was a little raucous for his taste. No, not that… just… loud. He was more of a sedate sort of person, or was that simply Aziraphale?</p>
<p>Ezra had no reason not to go.</p>
<p>“Oh?”</p>
<p>“A mutual friend. He thought you might appreciate the company.”</p>
<p>She held out a gloved hand, waiting to be helped down from the stool.</p>
<p>The heels, and the plume, and the height she already had… she towered above him, but looked as graceful as a gazelle who had been born a giraffe. </p>
<p>This was so very, very wrong. </p>
<p>“Then I will take his recommendation,” Ezra replied, warily. “Though I would also have enjoyed the company of one so dear to me as… our mutual friend.”</p>
<p>Her face did not react, but it was a mask of indifference over a field of anxiety. “He regrets being unavailable. But perhaps this would be more… seemly.”</p>
<p>Seemly.</p>
<p>Ezra offered his arm, and they walked out to find a cab.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The show was good, but Ezra couldn’t enjoy it. Why? Why now?</p>
<p>Was this some attempt to seduce him with an acceptable sexuality? Lifted skirts and painted lips? Kicks to split the thighs and invite intrusion? </p>
<p>It was not about that, not for him. The women were no more interesting to him than the men of the world. It was not them he wanted, it was - it was the creature beside him. If he truly thought that Crowley - Anthony - whoever this was - felt most at home as they were now, he would gladly accept it.</p>
<p>But instead, it felt as if it was performative. An attempt to morph and change into something that could be palated. </p>
<p>It was compromise, but it was all on the other. Where was his attempt? Why should Crowley always need to change, to be acceptable? It… it wasn’t right.</p>
<p>As the night ended, they strolled to a bench, and sat beneath the glow of the street lighting.</p>
<p>“Well, Monsieur, was that to your liking?”</p>
<p>“I liked it well enough,” he admitted. “But something was missing.”</p>
<p>“Oh? Was it the company?”</p>
<p>A hand touched his knee, and Ezra froze. No. Not like this.</p>
<p>It had to be true, and full, and complete. It could not be a half-measure. It had to be their entire, sincere selves. Anything else was a lie, and would ruin them in the end. He picked the hand up, kissed the back, and removed it back to her lap.</p>
<p>“I am afraid I am spoken for.”</p>
<p>Her posture stiffened, and her face… reddened more than the windmill itself. “I… see.”</p>
<p>“I am afraid I… you may have been given the wrong message. You see, to me, love must be free. It must - it must be the whole self.”</p>
<p>“Ah.”</p>
<p>“Do you understand me, my dear?”</p>
<p>“I do.” Her voice was acerbic, as her limbs tucked and folded in on herself. “I had - I had thought perhaps I would be acceptable. Our friend told me… your family had concerns…”</p>
<p>Heaven. Heaven had concerns. Ezra’s eyes tightened. “Yes.”</p>
<p>“And you think… they would not accept me.”</p>
<p>No, oh no, they would never. He refused to answer that. “It is more than them. It is… love should be of the whole self. And - and if it is not, it is not… love. It is infatuation, or… dalliance. It… must be… I could not, unless it was the whole self.”</p>
<p>“Then I have made a terrible fool of myself,” she said, rising in alarm, refusing to let herself be caught and restrained. </p>
<p>“Anthony--”</p>
<p>“Please. I cannot be who you need. I should stop this nonsense. I - I am sorry, mon cher. I truly am.”</p>
<p>Her long legs carried her away in those heels, and Ezra felt something snap irreparably inside him.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Aziraphale left word for Crowley. He was going back to London, to his bookshop. </p>
<p>He left another note, for the housekeeper. Shortly after he was gone, she posted it to the newspaper, unopened as promised.</p>
<p>Within a week, the obituary for Ezra Fell was printed.</p>
<p>A weakness of constitution, the brief closing statement said.</p>
<p>A broken heart, was the truth.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took months for Crowley to follow to London. Months. </p>
<p>Months that could very well have been years, and which Aziraphale spent in a mechanical haze of functioning without feeling.</p>
<p>Miracle. Book. Miracle. Book. Tea. Book. Book. Book.</p>
<p>Even food lost its flavour, and he forgot he wanted to eat at all. </p>
<p>But he smiled. At the people who walked into his shop. He smiled with his lips, and forced movement near his eyes, and fought the edge of terror if any kind-hearted soul sensed anything wrong and offered him comfort and consolation.</p>
<p>Aziraphale did not need this. He was an angel of the Lord. He did not feel emotions, not as Humanity did. And it had just been - </p>
<p>Better not to think of it at all.</p>
<p>When Crowley did appear, he was in the park, covered so completely and his face muffled by fuzz that drove any lingering femininity from the equation. Sharp, distant, unfeeling.</p>
<p>And Aziraphale did not like it, but at least he was alive, and at least he was here. Maybe in a few centuries, they could resume as if Paris had never happened, and go back to companionable enmity. </p>
<p>He did not like it, and he tried very hard to be fine with that.</p>
<p>He was, almost, until Crowley broke the pact and said things he shouldn’t. Asked for things he shouldn’t. Asked for--</p>
<p>What was he thinking? Holy water?</p>
<p>Was it not enough that they had killed Ezra and Anthony, must Crowley die, too? Was this in retaliation? An escalation? Was he trying to punish him?</p>
<p>Did he truly mean it?</p>
<p>There was no other reason for a demon to want holy water than to - to - </p>
<p>He could not even put it into words, even inside his mind. And the thought of losing him forever was enough to break what little control he still had over himself, and he lost his composure and his temper and he ran away with painful words a memory on his tongue, and his heart broke all over again.</p>
<p>If being together was this, then perhaps they were better apart. Perhaps to save his best friend, his one love, he must remove himself entirely. Allow him to exist, without the agony of their incomplete adoration.</p>
<p>Aziraphale died a second time. A third. He died so much, between the pages of books he should not read, that he forgot what it was to stay alive.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The next few years were difficult, full of abortive gestures and increasing levels of fear. </p>
<p>Aziraphale knew it would never be the same, could never be the same, and that the best they could do was carve out acceptable spaces and activities. Even eating together was fraught, and he spent his time glancing over his shoulder, worrying when next the Choir Celestial would appear and the whole game would be up. </p>
<p>Crowley… settled. Sort of. He became prickly in some ways, comfortable in others. They negotiated wordlessly over what they could manage, and they never - not once, not ever - attempted to define or describe.</p>
<p>It was safer, that way. Even if it was agonising to be so close, and unable to bridge the divide. Magnets held at the very edge of their pull, never coming closer than the lines of attraction, or they’d be forever connected and unable to part. </p>
<p>The Apocalypse Never was the hardest thing of all. </p>
<p>Other things - books, churches, nights at the Proms - those could happen and then be stepped back from, as fingers cooled from the burn and heartbeats returned to normal. </p>
<p>But this, at last, was an inescapable boundary. A limit, more unwavering than even their own mutual desires. It affected everyone and everything, and Aziraphale was torn to utter pieces as he tried to balance his sensible controls with the desire to perpetuate existence with the Plan he could not see with the Boy who was innocent but also evil with--</p>
<p>But it did not happen.</p>
<p>The world did not end. (Thankfully.) They found another way, a third way, that ignored Heaven and Hell and chose Humans instead. </p>
<p>And then they pushed both of them away. Crowley stood in fire, and he lay in water, and they were - at last - free.</p>
<p>And he had nothing any more to hold him back.</p>
<p>Free.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Freedom didn’t really make sense to him, at first. He had been so long under thumb that the pressure relieved left him aimless and goalless. Not that he had put much effort into the Plan itself for some time (how could you, when you only saw pieces?), and his most recent endeavour had been fighting himself about fighting the End. </p>
<p>From no real task but a lingering guilt, to a very real task and crushing guilt, to the inactivity and idleness of a life without any rules but those he set for himself. </p>
<p>And who was he, without them? Like the Humans who had only the need to survive, to eat and drink… but otherwise, no claims on their actions but the ones they decided they would accept. (At least, for the most part. If they were not slaves, of one form or another.) </p>
<p>He stood in his bookshop, seeing the few new tomes, and then he--</p>
<p>Wait.</p>
<p>Had Adam restored… everything?</p>
<p>Everything?</p>
<p>His heart beat wildly as he ran to his dresser, the one kept far, far from any prying eyes. In a room not even Crowley had stepped inside, where his most precious and delicate treasures were stored.</p>
<p>Three books. Three books, bound together with an old, faded ribbon. His hands shook as he lifted the tomes and undid the bow.</p>
<p>Inside were three loose leaves of paper. </p>
<p>One, the first sketch Crowley had done. The charcoal set by miracle, the paper foxed by years. </p>
<p>Two, the first poem he had ever composed. Awkward and conceited, but heartfelt and happy.</p>
<p>Three, the picture he’d drawn. It looked even more ridiculous now, with the eyes that didn’t match and the hair that attempted to conceal mistakes of form. Unmistakably Crowley - Anthony - <b>Crowley</b>.</p>
<p>Oh, how he’d injured him. How they’d injured one another. And yet, they had still been unable to part, even as the world was ending. </p>
<p>Crowley begging him, over and over. Leave with me. Run away with me. </p>
<p>Big skirts, grand paintings, stars. Every cry for him a plea to be wanted in return. Always bending, yielding, swaying to try to find the angel’s rhythm. Wanting so much to be good enough.</p>
<p>Didn’t he know he had always been? Couldn’t he know? That the judgement passed on him was from Up Above, and not Aziraphale?</p>
<p>How could he, when the angel had done nothing but rebuff, repel, and reject. </p>
<p>It was never Crowley who had needed to change: it was him.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Whereas in Paris, they had always met in Anthony’s attic, or a neutral location… London had been his. Aziraphale’s shop, or the places they shared.</p>
<p>He knew where he lived, but he had never been invited. Not until the Night That Should Never Have Existed.</p>
<p>Crowley had offered to let him stay, and he’d stolen in on his coat-tails, observing the stark reminders of a life long-lived.</p>
<p>Paintings, done by others. The distant throb of holiness from a rescued lectern. Plants (he’d always loved plants). Gaudy thrones. Fancy items that existed for the sake of existence. </p>
<p>A statue, which - well - it could be read in very many ways. It wasn’t Crowley’s hands that sculpted it, but it was clearly his mind that had described it into life. </p>
<p>Aziraphale held the books against his heart and stood at the door, steeling his nerves. </p>
<p>The door opened, and he was met by uncovered eyes and open surprise.</p>
<p>“Angel!”</p>
<p>“You must - you must forgive the intrusion, but I - I must say some things to you, and - and you must allow me to say them.”</p>
<p>Crowley canted his head, snake-like, assessing. But he yielded the way, a wave of his arm indicating that the angel was to enter. And then a hiss of breath past teeth as he saw the books for the first time.</p>
<p>Aziraphale strode in, beyond the door, so that he could not so easily be removed. Should he be barring Crowley’s exit, or should he block himself in? Well, it was too late, now. He thrust out the journals, and his heart stopped and things beyond a bodily muscle stopped and perhaps, again, time stopped. </p>
<p>“Why are you offering those to me?” came a quiet, low voice. </p>
<p>“Because they are for you. They were always for you, and no one else. Because you are the only one I ever wished to hear what I truly had to say.” No, that was not-- “I wish everyone would know, it is not that I - it - oh, blast it. Crowley, I wrote one more. In the final book.”</p>
<p>The one he had, by some accident or another, never actually used.</p>
<p>“Should… I read it?”</p>
<p>“It would be awfully awkward if you did not,” the angel huffed. “I wrote it just now.”</p>
<p>Crowley moved to the couch, and sat. His hands were dainty and fighting for control as he undid the fresh bow, and laid the journals out.</p>
<p>The last one. He knew which, even after all these years. </p>
<p>Aziraphale plucked at his sleeve nervously, unsure where to look, or how to feel. Six thousand years in total, and only brief flashes of lightning had ever illuminated the dark.</p>
<p>‘<i>Serpent. Demon. Crawly. Crowley.<br/>Anthony. Nanny. Whatever your name,<br/>Whatever your form,<br/>Whether you crawl on your belly,<br/>Soar through the skies,<br/>Or dance on your feet.<br/>No matter what, it is<br/>You<br/>You, whom I love.<br/>You, where I make my home.<br/>You, who own my heart and soul.<br/>My darling, my darling<br/>I love you.</i>’</p>
<p>It was messy, imprecise, utterly unpoetic and the most genuine thing he had ever committed to paper. Or to words, of any form.</p>
<p>He waited, and he ached, and the lights of the streets and the sting of sandstorms in the eyes and the smell of factory smoke and the blossoming of the trees and the taste of wine, of blood, of kisses, of everything… </p>
<p>“Angel?”</p>
<p>“I have been a fool, my dear. A fool to ever let you feel you were anything less than all I ever wanted. Can - can you forgi---oh!”</p>
<p>Crowley apparently forgot that he was not a wave and a particle, or remembered that he was, and covered the distance between them in one blink of the universe’s eye.</p>
<p>“Angel! I - you - you can’t--!”</p>
<p>His svelte legs bracketed Aziraphale’s thighs, and his hands had hold of his lapels, his eyes scouring beyond atoms and into things that could never have names. </p>
<p>Words hadn’t worked, but he remembered the moves from what seemed like forever and yesterday combined. He grasped Crowley’s collar in both hands, and pulled him in to take - and give - the kiss he’d wanted for longer than he knew what kissing even was. </p>
<p>Crowley didn’t resist. If anything, he yielded more pliantly than butter below a sun-warmed knife. Aziraphale pushed those lips and tasted the years of distance, eagerly licking past the barrier. He had been ‘Human’ each time before, but this time he let himself feel everything. Everything, and not just the superficial.</p>
<p>The way his demon’s body temperature hitched higher, and the contractions in the knees astride him. The curve of his spine as the pleasure changed his body, and the faintest snick of a canine fang when he pushed with his tongue. The unhidden longing, the fear combined with hope and the way Crowley subtly pushed them back, and back, until the angel was smushed into the couch and had no choice (really), but to grab his ass in both hands and make sure he didn’t run.</p>
<p>It had been… far too long coming. Ezra and Anthony had been good at kissing, but Aziraphale and Crowley had so, so much more between them. It felt as if the dress rehearsal was over, and now the play proper had begun.</p>
<p>They kissed like that for longer, maybe, than was quite essentially necessary, and the realisation that it was perfectly okay to do so was… it was like that first time, but ineffably more powerful. </p>
<p>It was them. All of them. Not just parts, sectioned off and hidden. It was the truest offering Aziraphale could ever make, and he was delighted to know it was accepted. Accepted, and reciprocated.</p>
<p>When they stopped, Crowley had to be urged to move, and this time it was the angel who took the other’s head in his lap. Combed, and toyed with his hair. Smiled, and held a hand tightly. </p>
<p>“Angel, you’re… certain?”</p>
<p>“I always was certain of <i>you</i>. That it <b>was</b> to be you.”</p>
<p>“But Heaven?”</p>
<p>“Heaven is Heaven. And I made my choice, and I chose you. And here. And now.” The Earth, and his snake. His very own beloved demon, with all his annoying habits and peculiar tastes and fast driving and pretend disinterest.</p>
<p>In his embrace, Crowley shuddered. But it was joyful, like the tingles were working down his spine, or he was shucking off an old skin and becoming who he should be.</p>
<p>Crowley - of any name - and Aziraphale. Together. Different, with all their similarities, and truly the strongest and happiest when together. </p>
<p>“I… I want to show you something, too.”</p>
<p>“Yes, my dear?”</p>
<p>“You have to promise not to laugh.”</p>
<p>“You have my word I will not.”</p>
<p>The demon slunk to his feet, and then offered his hand.</p>
<p>Taking it felt electric, and alarming, and glorious. Simple acts of contact that were the most pure show of dedication and connection. He rose, and refused to let go of the hand, even though Crowley muttered under his breath. (He also, most likely, loved it just as much.)</p>
<p>Into another room, another, until there was a single bookcase. He gestured, and the unit swung open to reveal a hidden room. The charmingness of it, so quaint and simple, had the angel fighting back a giggle of delight, and not mockery. </p>
<p>Inside… paintings that had clearly not been viewed in years. </p>
<p>Some he recognised. Ezra, asleep in Anthony’s bed. The view from their favourite picnic spot. </p>
<p>One which he did not like, of a tangled knot of red and black, all anger, fangs, and pain. He could imagine when it had been done.</p>
<p>Then, one more. </p>
<p>It was in Anthony’s old style, and it looked to have been painted then. </p>
<p>Nothing he’d ever seen, in the day.</p>
<p>In it, a rare self-portrait of the artist. He stood, facing Ezra. The figures were distant in focus, but it was clear as their hands touched, that they were happy.</p>
<p>Trees and lighting combined, giving a shadowed outline which tricked the eye. Or, tricked the Human eye.</p>
<p>No visible wings, but the trees cast the shape of them on the shape below. Wings, that curved up, and down, and enclosed the shadow-them in the loops of a stylised heart.</p>
<p>A wish. A dream. A hope that one day, they could be who they truly were, and what they truly felt. It hurt to look at, but he understood.</p>
<p>He understood that Anthony - and Crowley - had accepted the same thing. To love, they had to love every last part. And although he may have been ready sooner, he was prepared to wait.</p>
<p>“You did this--?”</p>
<p>“Before I came back to London,” Crowley replied, squeezing his hand. “I knew… I knew I’d fucked up. I knew I… I needed to be patient.”</p>
<p>“You knew I would one day be ready?”</p>
<p>“I knew even if you weren’t, that there was nothing that could change my mind. I knew that… as soon as you could, you would. And that you would know when that was.”</p>
<p>“You were so very patient and… what did I do to deserve you?”</p>
<p>“I think,” the demon snorted, “...that we deserve one another. Don’t you?”</p>
<p>Yes. Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Aziraphale wanted to touch the colours, the brush-strokes. He wanted to reach back in time and touch the hand, to explain things he had not been able to.</p>
<p>Things that, as ever, they had shrouded in the spaces between lines. The words omitted as important as the ones chosen. The gap, the missing space, that Anthony had depicted. </p>
<p>Things they could not continue to hide.</p>
<p>“He loved you, you know,” Aziraphale said. “All of you. Even though he was not… all of me. But all of me, it loved you too. Even if at times, it made me jealous of myself.”</p>
<p>“Jealous of--”</p>
<p>The angel turned. “I wanted to be able to be all of me with you. But I understood why you had… broken in two. I wanted nothing more than to wrap all of us, all our parts, into one.”</p>
<p>Crowley looked at the painting. It was what this was, after all, wasn’t it? Two bodies, but four truths. The simpler truths of the parts that they’d allowed to touch, and the aching need for the full self. The angel, and the demon, bursting at the seams.</p>
<p>“I thought - when it started - it was… a way to… say things I couldn’t say.” Crowley’s voice was faint, unsure. Difficult. “I didn’t plan on meeting you. It was just an escape. A place to be miserable.”</p>
<p>“And then I made it more difficult.”</p>
<p>“You could say that.” The demon’s shoulders rose and fell. “I couldn’t face what - if it was him, not me, then I could keep going. And then we had to stay apart. And I had… had to feel as if I didn’t know what was going on.”</p>
<p>“We were a pair of fools, weren’t we?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. But - considering the risks? I couldn’t push you. You couldn’t risk things. I couldn’t ask you to…”</p>
<p>And so, a false, half-life. Real people, but only elements of a bigger truth.</p>
<p>“I wanted to be with you. Fully with you. Not just Ezra, but Aziraphale. And because I couldn’t, with all of me… I couldn’t with any of me. And it was killing me, to be so close and not able to tell you the real truth.”</p>
<p>“I know.”</p>
<p>“I know you know,” he countered. “But I still have to say it. I always was in love with all of you. And I always wanted all of you. But because I couldn’t have that… it was better to have nothing.”</p>
<p>The pause was long, but not painful. Reflective. The gap was still there, would always be there, in the past. But they could cast light on it, and they could discuss it in words, and it would no longer be a thing to fear.</p>
<p>“We really were a mess, weren’t we?”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid so. I wanted so desperately to… to commit myself entirely to you, in any way you wanted, too. It meant… it meant everything. Not just the act, but… the promise. I was not ready before. But now… if you are… I am, too.”</p>
<p>“I am,” Crowley said, understanding entirely.</p>
<p>Blast him. He always, somehow, did. It was why the angel loved him so terribly much.</p>
<p>He could make any effort necessary, now. It only took the end of the world and a trial by hellfire and holy water, but - well - now. It was now.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Dire des quatre (et apres un autre quatres) verites a quelqu'un</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So he’d agreed to - to take the next step. To be physically intimate, or - oh, why couldn’t he even say it? They’d kissed, they’d cuddled, they’d fallen asleep in one another’s arms. They had quite literally possessed one another’s bodies. </p><p>This? Sexual congress? Love-making? It should hardly be any more than what they had already done. And yet, he’d decided this was important, somehow. And because he had decided it, it was.</p><p>They stood in the middle of these paintings, holding hands, chewing lips, both struck by the indecision of what came next. It had been so long coming (no double entendre intended), that it was almost a worry that he wouldn’t do it justice.</p><p>“What… what do you…?” Aziraphale felt at his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Should we discuss this, first?”</p><p>“Well, maybe. I mean, first off… do you… did you come prepared?”</p><p>“N-no. I’m…” He glanced down. “I didn’t want to unless you wanted me to.”</p><p>“I do. If you do, then I <i>do</i>.”</p><p>“And you have any… requests? Preferences? Ah… blast this.” He was being a fool. </p><p>“If it helps, I always saw you as more male than female,” Crowley offered. “Not that it would matter either way, but - uh - that was the default, if I thought about it.”</p><p>Oh thank the stars. Not that Crowley prefered that, but that he knew how awkward it was to even ask about what should be between his legs. At least Humans normally had that part organised, with a few exceptions! </p><p>“So that would be… a nice surprise?” Aziraphale teased. “Should you peek.”</p><p>“Well I know it wasn’t there last time I looked.”</p><p>“W-what?”</p><p>“...you’re telling me you were in my body and you <i>didn’t</i> look?”</p><p>“That would have been rude!” He was shocked by the suggestion.</p><p>“...so now you’re going to think I’m some kind of sexual deviant for looking?”</p><p>He laughed. “No, wiley serpent, I know you. It’s just not what <i>I</i> would do. Should I have?”</p><p>“Well.” Teeth in his smile. “Would you expect one, or the other, or both, or--?”</p><p>“Both? Heavens! Is that even - how would that - could you even--”</p><p>Crowley laughed again, the tension eking a little as he kissed the angel’s forehead. “Relax. I’m not wanting to kill you with possibilities on our first time. The more interesting things can happen later. If you want them to.”</p><p>“Oh.” He was being deliberately - well - Crowley. “Well, I have liked everything I have seen of you. It’s… you, not… not how you appear.”</p><p>“Still, helps to have a starting point.”</p><p>Anthony. Anthony had been the first real focus of his sexual thoughts and frustration. “Perhaps we should allow those two to… finally be together. And later… we have all the time in the world to dine at the infinite buffet table of sensuality?”</p><p>“Only you could turn it into a menu order. Very well, dick à la mode it is.”</p><p>Aziraphale chuckled, feeling relieved as he was led by the hand out of the gallery, to another room he’d never been in.</p><p>A large, dark-sheeted bed. Probably as large as they came, and certainly more plush and expansive than the attic in Paris would ever have boasted.</p><p>“Can we go slow, to… prepare?” he asked, trying to put into his voice the certainty. He was not having second doubts, he just wanted to ensure he got this right. Got it right, and memorised every fine detail. </p><p>“You think I’m not used to that, by now? If a little patience would kill me, I’d have died a million times by now.”</p><p>“And if I said: ‘shut up and kiss me’?”</p><p>Which was a trick, because Crowley was caught between the desire to say something witty, and the desire to do just that. </p><p>The demon stepped in, and Aziraphale looked up just a little to meet his eyes. Then he closed them, because it was Paris, again. Or more, but the same, as he felt warm hands capture his face and warmer lips ply at his own.</p><p>Aziraphale’s own hands found Crowley’s shoulders, folded under and up to hold on and keep him close. They kissed with no hurry, like they used to, and Aziraphale let the desire for affection and touch suffuse him. He let the places they met welcome the memories, and he tried not to be too conscious of the ‘effort’, instead letting the growing awareness and arousal seep much as he imagined it might into an already-male form. Each heartbeat pushing more blood there, pumping his sense of ‘self’ into a gradually filling point. Area. Pointed bit. <i>Shaft</i>. </p><p>It still didn’t feel dick-shaped, but more because his arms didn’t feel arm-shaped. They just existed, and felt more of their existence when they came into contact with other things.</p><p>That was the point, right? He drifted his hands down to Crowley’s waist, and then gripped the belt and tugged. He was a little too tall for complete connection, but something (thigh?) brushed against him, and he rocked into it. And into it. And felt the way that part of his body was more insistent, and less diffusely glowing. A keener sensation, and he startled as Crowley toppled them both backwards, and landed on the bed on his elbows, with the angel now obviously grinding into his upper thigh.</p><p>Aziraphale took the chance to push his mouth into the crook of Crowley’s neck, knowing just where to suckle to ratchet his heart faster, and to make him moan and squirm. It was better, now, because the squirming gave him very interesting sensations, and because the moaning made his urgent need peak higher.</p><p>“You… sssseem to know what you’re… doing with it,” Crowley cooed, his hands yanking shirt and waistcoat away, so his fingers pushed into bare skin.</p><p>“Don’t think it’s that challenging,” he huffed, and raked his own fingernails below Crowley’s shirt to scratch neatly at his hip. “I was never afraid of it.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Or you.”</p><p>“I <i>know</i>.” </p><p>Aziraphale wasn’t sure the demon always had been, and he wrapped his lips around the rise of his apple, feeling the vibrations of every moan. They toyed with fabric they wouldn’t fully remove, and the angel shunted his knee more intently, looking for the reaction of--</p><p>“FUCK!”</p><p>Yep. He had discovered the same kind of sensations. The angel grinned as Crowley clawed at his hips and started to rut down at his knee, looking for more of that friction that felt so good.</p><p>“I believe I’ve gone slow enough, but I can--”</p><p>“Slow next time. Angel.”</p><p>He rocked back onto his haunches, and his belly tensed and flexed under the palms stroking it while he sought to divest himself of upper body clothing. Crowley’s expression was beyond anything Anthony had ever shown, and Aziraphale was emboldened by the outright desire.</p><p>Crowley wanted him. Very much so. He found him sensual and sexually appealing, and the angel purred as he let hands worship his tummy, his flanks, his breast. Sharp nails glanced over nipples - oddly more erogenous than he had imagined, before he’d endowed himself - and Aziraphale braced his hands on the bed and began to glide his lap over Crowley’s thigh, making a show of riding his sex pushed into him. </p><p>“Fuck, angel… you’re… do you know what you do to me?”</p><p>The mussed hair, the blown eyes, the parted lips and the colour staining down his cheeks and throat and over the sliver of bare chest told him that he did. “You could show me.”</p><p>Crowley grabbed for the angel’s belt, and shoved a hand below his waistband, grabbing hold of Aziraphale’s cock and starting to pump it in his palm with decidedly rapid strokes.</p><p>“I - I thought you were… going to sh-show me what you---”</p><p>“I need this.” Crowley’s eyes begged. “I need to see this.”</p><p>He was still half-dressed! He was pushing his balls into his pants, into the demon’s thigh, as he held above his knees and rolled and sought out more. Was this a good idea? Was this how he wanted to find his first release?</p><p>But the eyes. How could he deny those eyes. They wanted to see him happy. They wanted to see him enjoy this. Wanted to know it was--</p><p>Did it always feel like that? The creases in his fingers, the slide of skin on skin? The atavistic need to move. To push, to roll, to thrust, to…</p><p>Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s shoulders, feeling exposed and open and helpless and knowing all the way to his core that it was okay. Okay to let the noises pour from his lips. To feel the way his body swelled and heated and wanted. Wanted. WANTED. DAMN BUT IT -- HE --</p><p>Crowley did something with his wrist, and Aziraphale <i>howled</i> and his spine felt like it snapped and he was helplessly spilling something mineral and salty and wet and thick and oh, oh, but he kept touching until the angel whimpered, dropping to push his head into the bed beside his lover’s own. </p><p>It was…</p><p>Mmmm.</p><p>Yes. He could see why they liked to do that. The climax echoed through his thighs and ass, like a shaken bottle of champagne that then made a mess over everything when finally opened. He hummed in satisfaction, jittering little ruts more and wondering how fast he could expect to do that again?</p><p>“Good?” Crowley asked, hoarsely. </p><p>“Mmmm. Allow me to show you?”</p><p>Crowley lifted his hand, and Aziraphale was delighted and scandalised when he realised the demon was tasting his release. He pushed his face towards Crowley’s, and took the fingers he was offered to suckle.</p><p>It was nice. But he couldn’t help but think it would be nicer to taste his beloved’s seed, and he started to thrust his knee again.</p><p>“We are wearing too much,” he complained, pulling at Crowley’s shirt, and then beaming when he was tumbled onto his back. </p><p>“Can’t have that,” Crowley humphed, letting go of his cock at last to yank and tug and help the angel kick off the rest of his own clothes. </p><p>He then sat up, writhing out of his own shirt and associated layers, and yelped in surprise when Aziraphale turned the tables back and flipped him to lie on his back again.</p><p>“Allow me,” Aziraphale suggested, and nudged his chin up to kiss his way down his throat and further, to one dusky nipple then the next. He worked quickly with belt, buckle, zip… rolling to one knee then the other as he shucked the last shreds of fabric off. A sweep of his wrist sent the things flying from the bed, and then he knelt back to admire the naked male-like thing below.</p><p>“Like what you see?”</p><p>“<i>Always</i>.”</p><p>Crowley’s hands rested on the angel’s thighs, and Aziraphale decided to take more time. Maybe he was a bastard, after all, or maybe he just knew the importance of properly savouring things. He ghosted his hands over that flat belly, and the juts of his bones around the hips. Over the small thatch of coarser, but still vibrant hair. Lifting and hefting and running his thumb over the balls his palm supported. </p><p>It was entirely possible his own body was twitching with sympathetic enjoyment, and he tapped the tip of a finger to the end of the bobbing, red length between them.</p><p>“Aaaaangel.”</p><p>“Oh, my dear. You know that I do nothing without my whole heart.”</p><p>“Ugh!”</p><p>“You said you could be patient. And I owe you the most splendid of experiences, for your diligent devotion.”</p><p>“Bugger you and your words,” he mumbled, shoving his nose into the bedding. </p><p>“Buggery can happen later. First, I wish to watch.”</p><p>He felt the twitch in Crowley’s body at the suggestion of penetration, and his own most certainly liked the idea. He would have to try every single permutation. It was like tapas! Or - or sushi! Except every dish was a full meal, and he was not sure he could be filled too much. Not if the way his cock swelled at the concept was any indication.</p><p>“I intend to, you know,” he said, as he mimicked the earlier tugs, watching the way Crowley’s belly tugged in and his hips squirmed whorls into the bed like he was walking. “Buggery. Sodomy. I want to feel this inside of me, and to have you in my mouth. And I want to be inside of you, too. I want to hold your hair and hips as I drive into you, and I want you to pin me to the bed, the wall, the table…”</p><p>“ANGEL!”</p><p>He barely touched him, feathery-soft strokes and little taps of a rhythm he couldn’t unhear. </p><p>“I want you to fuck me until the tears run down my face. And I want to hold you and make love to you so slowly that our legs shake. I want to plunge my fingers into your womanhood and enter you so deeply you worry we can never part.”</p><p>Crowley grasped the sheets, trying to buck, held down by Aziraphale’s weight and words. “Yes, yes, oh fuck yes. Oh fuck, angel, angel--!”</p><p>“I want to bury my face in your bosom. I want to drink down every drop of love you will give me, until my cheeks are red, raw, dripping.”</p><p>Crowley enjoyed the words as much as the touching, and Aziraphale found they came to him as easily as breathing. Loving Crowley was like that, all rushing emotion and the world of possibility in front of them.</p><p>“M’g’nna…. Nnnnnngghhhhhhellllll…..”</p><p>“Will you fuck me?” he asked, as he twisted sharply down. “Will you make me yours?”</p><p>“YES!” Crowley screamed, as Aziraphale gave him the tighter squeeze he’d been needing. The sound turned into a yowling, into a shout of victory and surrender, into terrified happiness. He spilled with a pressure that spoke of long-denied lust, and his head threw first this way, then that, as he twitched and keened until he dropped, boneless and satisfied. </p><p>Aziraphale stretched out, moving so his cock pressed into Crowley’s belly, and he lay atop him. He lapped at his hand, and it definitely tasted better. </p><p>Crowley’s arms flew around his neck, and they kissed. And kissed. And kissed.</p><p>Kissed until Crowley was no longer shaking quite so badly, and was all tangly and nuzzly. </p><p>Aziraphale was still aroused, but he would give his demon a little time to recover, before he started again.</p><p>“Fuck,” Crowley cursed again.</p><p>“Exclamation, or request?”</p><p>His eyes widened. “You really want to go again already?”</p><p>“Don’t you?”</p><p>“Six thousand years and you turn into a nymphomaniac overnight?”</p><p>Aziraphale moved, so his little thrusts aligned his cock to his lover’s. “I have much to make up for. And I do so desperately, desperately love you.”</p><p>“Mmmmn,” came the increasingly interested reply. “Keep up that smooth talking, and you’ll have anything you want.”</p><p>“Really?” He took an earlobe between his teeth. “Think you could paint us like this? Or paint while we are?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You want my poetry, then I want your paintings,” he bartered, and deliberately breathed warm gusts over his pulsepoint. “And I want to see how easily I can wreck your concentration span.”</p><p>“Monster,” Crowley said, and rolled them again.</p><p>A big bed was a wonderful thing, Aziraphale decided, as he played a game of kissing to see who would lead next. </p><p>Freedom was wonderful. Truth was better. Love was the most perfect thing of all.</p><p>Especially when it was Crowley, but it could never have been anyone but him, if Aziraphale told the truth. And now, nothing could stop him from doing so.</p><p>They nearly fell out of bed anyway, but a sudden burst of wings meant they kept in place.</p><p>And then there were hands in wings, and all bets were off. And staying off. For the next… oh… six thousand years? At least.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Apres avoir faire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Crowley liked to paint, it turned out. And when Crowley was happy, Crowley painted a lot of things.</p>
<p>He painted distant figures walking by the lake, and ducks causing a ruckus. He painted starry skies above tall, gothic buildings which had long since fallen. He painted fruit (much to Aziraphale’s teasing complaint). He painted leafy canopies. Huge, vaulted ceilings. Desert dunes. Women and men in all sorts of clothing.</p>
<p>He painted things he wanted to. Some of them from memory, some from imagination, and some from life.</p>
<p>All styles and methods, from finger-smudged thick oils to delicate, almost mechanically-thin scrawled spider-webs of ink. He drew for the joy of it.</p>
<p>Sometimes Aziraphale posed (whether he knew it or not). Sometimes it was him at work, or at rest. Sometimes he donned props and stood in ridiculous poses and attempted to look either victorious, or downtrodden, or revolutionary, or - well - ardent. Hungry. </p>
<p>He loved each one, and they hung some in the shop, and others in their shared home.</p>
<p>Aziraphale still wrote. Less of it was about how to convey in unacknowledged terms that he would very much like to tell a certain other person that he was entirely, insanely in love with him. And wanted to spend eternity with him. And was interested in doing various acts of public indecency, minus the public. With him. To him. On him.</p>
<p>He still did want those things, and occasionally he would put it into words. With metaphors, similes, awful descriptions or outright erotic text.</p>
<p>But he also wrote about other things, and it wasn’t all verse. He wrote prose. Memories of things they’d done or seen. Musings on the day. Ideas. Shopping lists. Little notes to push into Crowley’s jacket so he would find them later on, and know his angel had thought about him ever so slightly more than usual. </p>
<p>Those weren’t for the public. But maybe some of the books could be, he thought.</p>
<p>It was just - who would want to read what he had to say?</p>
<p>Crowley scoffed and said anyone with half a mind.</p>
<p>Maybe, Aziraphale thought. Maybe he’d master his own mind - or half of it - enough to let anyone else peek inside. </p>
<p>But until then, he had an audience of one. And it was really all he’d ever needed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  
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